


Perihelion

by Sebastian_Jack



Series: The Tragedy of Darth Annihila the Untamed [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: All of These Characters Are Idiots, Amputation, Armitage Hux is Not Nice, Canon Rewrite, Canon-Typical Violence, Casual Sex, Cybernetics, Daddy Issues, Death By Pettiness, Do Not Ignore That Last Tag, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Female Knights of Ren, Force Mind Reading (Star Wars), Force Sex (Star Wars), Hate Sex, I'm Serious, Inappropriate Use of the Force, Love Triangles, Mommy Issues, Possessive Behavior, Rough Kissing, Rough Sex, Seriously rough sex, Sith, That's Not How The Force Works (Star Wars), War, they're not nice to each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:42:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 21
Words: 48,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27874022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sebastian_Jack/pseuds/Sebastian_Jack
Summary: Kylo Ren has a job to do. But it's no secret that he feels the pull towards the Light. Can one of his loyal Knights steer him back towards the Shadow, despite Hux getting in the way at every turn?This is not the love story you think it is. It's a better one.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Knights of Ren, Armitage Hux/Original Female Character(s), Ben Solo | Kylo Ren/Original Female Character(s), Knights of Ren & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: The Tragedy of Darth Annihila the Untamed [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2056023
Comments: 6
Kudos: 17





	1. Preface

**Author's Note:**

> If you're coming here from CotW, hoo boy, look out. This is extremely different. You have been warned. 
> 
> This was an exercise in writing a story biased towards the goals of a bunch of irredeemably, inexcusably evil people. My goal is that in the thick of it (and by the end), you'll forget how objectively awful they all are and see them as the protagonists that they view themselves as. That would be a success, for me.

Field Guide to Dathomirians, and the Ul'Zabrak Language

(The Species and Native Tongue of Our Detestable Protagonist)

(Because Sebastian Jack loves conlangs, shut up)

Zabraks (Darth Maul, Savage Opress) and Dathomirians (Asajj Ventress) are species which originate from the twin planets Iridonia and Dathomir. Historically, Dathomirians as a race that came into existence when Zabraks bred with Force-sensitive Humans. As a result, all Dathomirians are born Force-sensitive.

They’re an interesting species for many reasons, not least of which is the fact that they are entirely matriarchal. Men hold very little power; social, familial, political, religious, or military. For this reason, a Dathomirian woman would excel in Human-male-dominated arenas, but be very annoyed the entire time, because Human men (especially Force-null Human men) are very much beneath her.

During their reign (~600 years Before Battle of Yavin – 4 years After Battle of Yavin), the Dathomirian Nightsisters unlocked many Dark Side secrets and abilities that no other Sith have ever been able to replicate. Pyromancy, invisibility, etc. This made them an extremely deadly force. And their companions, the Nightbrothers, were the vicious, bloodthirsty killers who followed their every command.

Ul’Zabrak is the native language spoken language on the planet Dathomir (homeworld of the Dathomirian race, seat of power for the Nightsisters and Nightbrothers) and Iridonia (sister planet, home to many Zabraks). Dathomiri is, technically, its own language, but it is only used for spellwork and Magick rites, not for day-to-day communication.

As a language, Ul’Zabrak is all about compounding syllables into words.

‘i – Prefix or suffix that means “my”

Ay – Honorific title, literally “crown”

Devsta – Dangerous or deadly; wild

Ip – Hunter

Lath – Skilled

Nek – Dark (black in color) or Dark Side

Nuin – Friend/ companion

Oenshar – Beloved (noun)

Pelira – Love (change the noun to a verb by saying _Pelir’e_ )

Pur – Beautiful

Rak – Extreme power or strength, I am in awe of this

Sharee –You (interestingly, “I/ mine” would be expressed _I’Sharee_. Literally “my you” or “my yours”) Considered archaic, but still used in “High” (read: Dathomirian, NOT Iridonian) Zabrak.

Vyshtal – Warrior/ knight

By combining these syllables, you can express an extremely complex idea with a single word.

Examples:

Ay’vyshtal – Honorific way to address a warrior or Knight

Devsta’rak – Dangerous, wild thing that I am in awe of

I'sharee pelir'e sharee – I love you

Ip’lath – Skilled hunter

Pur’nuin’i – My beautiful friend

Vyshtal’nek – Dark Side warrior/ Knight

Add ‘i onto the beginning or end (depending mostly on noun placement and ease of flow) of any positive descriptors and you basically have an Ul’Zabrak pet name. _My_ royal warrior, _my_ deadly friend, etc.

Remember: the people who speak this language have all the grace and physical beauty of Tolkien Elves, and the general temperament/ battle prowess of Klingons. Their language, and the way they speak it, reflects that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The language isn't a huge part of this, I'm just physiologically incapable of writing a story entirely in English. There's maybe one instance where it's really important, and I promise I'll re-explain the phrase at that point.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to give you guys the first ~40 pages of this. It works as a standalone story. But, if this gets a decent response, I'll post the other ~200 pages. By the end, you'll probably be able to figure out what those extra pages are an exploration of.

“Finalizer _, this is AR-384, requesting clearance for landing_.”

The General’s skin bristles to hear it, standing at a stiff attention in the blue glow of the control room. The wide-eyed technician looks to him for approval, and he offers a curt nod.

“ _Finalizer_ to AR, you are cleared for approach.”

“ _Copy,_ Finalizer _, approach is 5 by 5 to main hanger_.”

“Inform Kylo Ren that our guest has arrived,” the General orders, turning and striding from the room, “And I want a security detail at a discreet distance at all times.”

“Yes, Sir.”

A single trim, black fighter; a uniquely restored and re-outfitted _Delta_ -class T-3c salvaged from the old Imperial fleet, sweeps into the landing bay to the flash and blare of sirens. The lateral wings fold upwards as it approaches. It lights gracefully, and the engines power down, just as General Hux steps through the door. He’s joined by a small detachment of Storm Troopers, and they make their way across the hanger, amidst a swarm of purpose-driven engineers. The door of the ship descends, hissing on its hydraulic arms, and its pilot is revealed.

Hooded, and cloaked in black, the Knight of Ren is alarmingly tall, but by her shape, unmistakably female. Humanoid, in that she walks upright on two legs, with two arms and ten fingers. She carries two curved-hilt light sabers, one on each hip. A mask-like helmet of red and black obscures her face, veined with red to emulate the Sith tattoos of old. Her eyes are invisible beneath the long, narrow slits that run on an angle from the forehead to the bottom of the helmet. It extends far below her chin, tapering to a pair of narrow spikes.

It makes the General wonder at what sort of disfigured mess she’s hiding beneath it. Ruined skin, missing eyes and teeth. Or perhaps something so wretchedly inhuman she’d hardly be recognizable as a woman at all.

_I could do without having to cater to this black-magic theater_ , he thinks bitterly, _I’m trying to win a war._

As she descends the ramp in driven, confident strides, he takes note of the fact that her legs are not organic. The limbs seem slightly too long; it’s not severe enough to notice at first, but now that he’s seen it, he finds it unsettling enough. They’re covered in black synthflesh, tapering smoothly through the calf and ankle, and her feet- if you could call them that- are permanently flexed so that she balances gracefully on the balls of her feet.

_Alien_ , he thinks, viscerally repulsed.

She comes to a stop before him, and though their heights are comparable, he cannot shake the notion that she is looking down on him. The feeling sends a bolt of anger sizzling through his chest.

“Armitage Hux,” she says, her voice low and distorted by her helmet. He can detect a slight accent in her Basic, but cannot identify it for the sound modulation.

“ _General_ Hux,” he pointedly corrects. “Am I to understand you’re the representative sent by the Supreme Leader?”

“Yes.” She turns and begins striding across the hanger, towards the door. Frustrated, the General rushes to catch up, followed closely by his Storm Troopers.

“Your arrival is premature,” he observes, trying to step in front of her. She doesn’t let him.

“My prior mission for the Supreme Leader concluded prematurely.”

He scowls. “I have notified Ren of your arrival, perhaps—”

“We are both Ren.”

He catches her by the shoulder, and though she stops, she does not turn to face him. “Now you listen to me,” he seethes in a low voice, “I want to make it perfectly clear to you that I strongly opposed the addition of your presence here. I won’t have my operations disrupted by the Knights of Ren.”

“It is not your place to oppose orders from the Supreme Leader,” she replies, unflinching, “Only to obey them.”

His eyes are flinty, crackling with rage. “Nevertheless.”

She resumes her brisk pace. “Inform Kylo Ren that I will meet with him after my report to Snoke.”

As she stalks away, down the hall, Hux can’t help but remark to one of his Storm Troopers, “Something of a predator, isn’t she? I thought she’d be a man.”

“Sir?”

He rolls the name around on his tongue, grimacing as though it were something bitter. “ _Ap’lek,_ ” he sneers, “It sounds like a man’s name.”

“Ap’lek Ren.” The deep voice echoes off the walls in the dark, cavernous meeting room.

She kneels before the massive, shimmering hologram. “Supreme Leader.”

He nods. “Rise, my Daughter.”

She glides to her feet, gazing up through the slits in her helmet at the scarred, twisted face of her Commander. “My lord, I have arrived to the _Finalizer_ and have made contact with the General.”

“What of Kylo Ren?”

“Not yet, my orders were to report to you first.”

He sits back in his chair, eyeing her ponderously. “You have always been our most loyal.”

She bows deeply. “Thank you, Supreme Leader.”

“Your objective here is simple,” he illuminates, his voice rattling the cage of her chest, “I sense that Kylo feels the pull to the Light. Never before has a Knight of Ren faced such a challenge as the one that lies before him now. You, Ap’lek Ren, are powerful. Guide him. See that he completes his mission.”

She cannot help but feel slighted. _If I am the most loyal, and more powerful than he, then why has he been chosen over me?_

“No!” The deep voice booms through the chamber, and she flinches, falling to her knees again. “I can see your mind. I can see your anger. You ambition is unparalleled, yes, and it gives you strength. But only the blood of Vader can defeat our enemy! Only the blood of Vader could hope to lay claim to the Throne of Sith!”

Masking the sting she feels at his admonishment, she offers a deep bow. “Yes, Supreme Leader.”

“You will guide Kylo Ren back to Darkness.”

“And if he will not be led, Sir?”

“Then you will kill him.”

She nods, absorbing the command with strict attention.

“Go.”

She lowers her head again as the holo fades. It annoys her, having to parlay with that golem. Annoys her that she has to bow and scrape like everyone else, after the things she’s seen and done for this Order. Appearances must be upheld, she understands that. And so, for Kylo’s sake, for the sake of the Empire they’re all trying to build (yes, Snoke included), she’ll behave. But she’d much rather take the time to fly out to Exegol herself, if it meant—

_He’s close._

All at once, Ap’lek Ren can sense a familiar presence. She turns to watch the door to the corridor slide away, and is met by the commanding figure of Kylo Ren, cloaked and masked as she is. Her heart soars.

His voice is low, and distorted by the vocoder in his helmet. Inhuman. “My old friend.”

“My Brother.” She puts a gloved hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently.

He returns the gesture. “Let us talk.”

He leads her in silence to his quarters, and she is distantly aware of the small detachment of Storm Troopers following behind them, just around each corner. His room is low-lit, and Spartan in furnishing. The walls are draped with the red and black banners of the Knights of Ren, and the First Order. A low table rests on the floor between a pair of metal chairs, and in the corner, the melted, greying helmet of Darth Vader is displayed on a pedestal, beneath a beam of light. The far wall houses a doorway that leads to his bedroom.

“Please,” he gestures towards one of the chairs, “Sit.”

She takes her place across from him, studying him through her eye slits.

“I have never seen this mask,” he states.

“No. Cardo was good enough to put it together, for me, the last time I saw the Knights.”

“How are they?”

She smiles. “They miss you.” Brushing her hood back, she slips her thumbs beneath the jaw of her helmet. There’s a soft click, followed by a hiss, and she lifts it away to set it on the table. He cocks his head at the sight of her face.

She’s much older now than she was at their last meeting. Now, unmistakably Dathomirian. Her features, once so bright and youthful, now carry a dark and terrible beauty.

_The way a Knight of Ren should look,_ he thinks.

Silver-white eyes shine out from her pale face. Her cheekbones are high and prominent, her lips unnaturally full. Seductively full. A jagged, black _jat’i_ extends down the left side of her face, from her forehead to her jaw- an odd, asymmetrical homage to her culture, and a tribute to the Sith Lords of old. A silver ring clings to the center of her lower lip, bisecting it, and one of her earlobes is stretched wide by what is either a small Rancor fang or (more likely) a large _orat_. Torn, he’d imagine, from the still-warm skull of whatever unfortunate Zabrak male got in her way.

That, unfortunately, sends his mind skittering off in a direction he’d rather it didn’t, just yet, so he pushes the thought from his head.

Her long, black hair (rare, for Dathomirians) is pulled back into a severe and complicated bun, and held in place by a wide, silver band. The nape of her neck is shaved close, and more tattoos adorn the bare skin there. He could see it when she bent to remove her helmet. No horns, at least none that he can see, save the one in her ear. _(STOP)_ She could be human, were it not for her beauty, so otherworldly, and captivating. Or the fire that springs from her fingertips: sometimes playful, sometimes deadly, he remembers it well.

_She could have been a Nightsister. A Witch of Dathomir._

He responds in kind: removing his own helmet and placing it beside hers. His eyes are dark and piercing beneath a heavy brow, and set high on his face among strong, sharp features. His jaw runs at a high angle from his narrow chin, skin speckled with a constellation of freckles and moles. Beautiful mouth. Lips that suggest both tenderness and cruelty.

_Yes_ , she thinks. _Precisely what a Sith should look like_.

His hair cascades to his shoulders in long, dark waves, swept back from his face, and she wants suddenly to touch it.

_“Ben, can you fly?”_

_“I can fly anything.”_

_“No, can_ you _fly?”_

_“Can you?”_

_“No, but my ears aren’t that big!”_

Yes, she thinks, it can only be a good thing that he’s grown his hair out. No one would follow Lord Ren if they saw those ears.

She brushes her cloak back and crosses her legs, meeting his gaze confidently. “Twelve years.” She speaks softly, distantly acknowledging the rush of joy she feels to be near him again. “You haven’t changed. You… You feel the same.”

His brow twitches with comprehension, that feeling of seeing and being seen. “You do, too,” he observes, “Feel the same. You look different, though. It’s Ap’lek, now?” Without the mask, his voice is low and level, like warm, dark wood.

She nods, a hint of a smile tugging at her lips.

“It’s beautiful,” he appraises, “From _Ip’Lath,_ I assume? That would be… Skilled hunter. Unless I’m mistaken.”

She exhales sharply, entirely in awe of him. “Old friend, you know me in your marrow.”

He nods confidently, but his eyes flit away.

_Yes_ , she thinks. _I can sense it too. His pull towards the Light. He is looking for an excuse to let me take his place._ And as much as she may want that, she is suddenly driven to guide him back to the path. _I understand, now. I understand what I must do._

“And your legs,” he continues, sitting back in his chair and eyeing them, “What happened?”

“It was elective,” she explains, running her fingers along one smooth shin. The look on her face is almost nostalgic as she straightens her knee, watching her foot rise towards the ceiling before crossing it over the other again. “Necessary suffering in order to attain a higher understanding of pain, love, and detachment. And now, I am only stronger. Though perhaps more Cortosis than flesh.”

He looks across at the woman before him, and something stirs within his chest. He had begun to feel attachment to her more than a decade ago, during their training together. They were both young. But after the fall of the Praxeum, the Knights of Ren were scattered across the Galaxy, each fulfilling a different mission for the Supreme Leader. She has been somewhere in the Unknown Regions, this he knows. Doing what, he dare not ask. Not yet. That she has re-entered his life can only mean that the bond between them is strong. _Yes. The Force has surely willed this union._

He can’t help but ask, “Why has the Supreme Leader sent you to me?”

The word choice makes her bristle. But she can sense in him a whisper of fear, and his thoughts linger momentarily on his failure on Jakku. It is out of defensiveness that he speaks to her this way, and so she does not take offense.

“I am to offer counsel during this critical period. The Supreme Leader does not want to see our objectives undermined by the blind militants of the First Order. Ours is a higher purpose,” she states matter-of-factly, “They are but the tools we have chosen to exact that purpose. Together, we will keep them under control.” It’s a lie, of course. But a very convincing one. It is not hard for her to mask her thoughts from him; she’s had extensive training. And although the Ren are meant to draw from their emotion, to strengthen their understanding of the Force through love and rage, Kylo has yet to find the most powerful balance. Too often, his mind is clouded by his heart, and that makes him weak.

He shifts in his chair, taking on his distinctively odd tone. His expression is emotionless, but his voice is almost playful. “I imagine that General Hux was less than welcoming. He has been a force of considerable… _resistance_ for some time, now.”

Her mouth twists into a smirk. “Allow him his petty displays of power. One way or another, he will learn that his life only carries worth for as long as he is useful to us.”

He nods, pensively, and they lapse into silence. She can sense that he is grappling with a thought, and that intrigues her. His has always been a beautiful mind, and one that she has long enjoyed peering into. In twelve years, he never learned to detect her. Never learned to resist. He is so complex in the way he thinks, his emotions so strong and fleeting. Never still, never quiet; an ever-shifting sea. And now, she cannot help but allow herself to appreciate his physical beauty. _He’s grown into his features_ , she muses fondly. _No longer the awkward little boy of our shared youth._ But she can sense that the thought on his tongue is persistent, and quite consuming for him.

“Tell me what it is you’re thinking,” she coaxes, masking the seriousness of her command with a gentle tone, “Give way to impulse.”

His eyes flit across her face, and he is disarmed. “It fills me with contentment to be near you again,” he admits in a strong voice. “The Force has surely willed this.”

She smiles genuinely, leaning forward to grip him by the shoulder. The sudden closeness surprises him, though it’s not uncomfortable. In fact, he feels a pang of desire. She looks into his dark eyes and squeezes his shoulder. His thick muscle does not yield easily to her fingers, and for a fleeting moment, she wonders what he looks like beneath that heavy, black robe. It’s a thrilling thought, and one she will allow herself to dwell on in the coming days.

“I agree, old friend,” she says, sternly, “I believe this is a sign that the balance has tipped in our favor. The Jedi will not survive our united front.”

He is struck by the impulse to tear his gloves away and touch her cheek. He wants to feel her skin beneath his hand, he wants to trace along the edges of her tattoo with his fingertips. He compromises, and wraps a gloved hand around the back of her neck. His thumb rests on the edge of her jaw, just below her ear. She does not withdraw, and he savors the moment triumphantly.

“We will finish what my grandfather started,” he hisses proudly, “Together, we will return the Galaxy to its rightful state.”

They stand in unison, both overcome by the same urge. They wrap one another in a tight embrace, closing their eyes to savor the connection. She can sense in him a tangle of emotions, all warring to take control.

_You will find balance_ , she thinks confidently, her head resting on his shoulder. _With my guidance, your chains will be broken._

He withdraws, still holding her by the back of the neck, and her eyes are very close. Her gloved hand comes to rest on his cheek, and she smiles up at him. It’s the kind of smile that brightens and lifts at her entire face. The kind of smile that only he has ever elicited from her. The long, hard years apart fall away in the blink of an eye, and suddenly, he is young again. Hopeful.

“ _Vyshtal’nek_ ,” she whispers, “We will be limitless.”


	3. Chapter 3

Just days later, disaster strikes. Stripped of their cloaks and helmets, Kylo and Ap’lek are seated together in his quarters aboard the Finalizer. Eyes closed, they meditate in silence over the helmet of Darth Vader.

She has, in a way, always harbored a certain amount of envy towards Kylo, for his blood connection to Sith Lord of Prophecy. She will never voice it to him, or anyone else, but it has governed many of her decisions. She has had to forge, through discipline and strength of will, the bond that he was born with. In the deepest, most secret corners of her mind, she believes that makes her claim to the Throne stronger than his. But Kylo is the blood of Vader. He is a Skywalker by birth. It is his right, and his burden, and no one else’s. And that is not his fault. Now, she works to channel the passive experiences of envy and frustration into the active experiences of fury and rage.

_Let the hate flow through you. Let it guide your blades._

Their focus is broken by the sudden flash and blare of sirens. They look to one another for a moment, and he can see the fire kindled in her eyes. It both thrills and frightens him. They swiftly don their helmets and cloaks, and sweep out of the room.

They stride onto the command bridge, shoulder to shoulder, and Kylo announces their presence. “General Hux,” he steps in front of him, “Is it the Resistance pilot?”

He bristles, looking between them. “Yes. And he had help from one of our own.”

The Knights of Ren look to each other, and she can sense the fury crackling through him. _Good_. _Draw from it._

The General turns away briskly. “We’re checking the registers now to identify which Storm Trooper it was.”

“The one from the village,” Kylo seethes, “FN-2187.”

A technician calls out from a nearby console, “Sir! Ventral cannons hot!”

“Fire!”

As the battle wages around them, Ap’lek steps up to whisper to Kylo. “This is unacceptable,” she says, “Again, our efforts to locate Skywalker have failed, due to the gross incompetence of the First Order.”

He nods, letting her poison work its way into him. Steeling him.

“General!” another technician calls out, “They’ve been hit!”

He strides across the room to study her monitor. “Destroyed?”

“Disabled. They were headed back to Jakku. The fighter’s projected to crash in the Goazon Badlands.”

“They were going back for the droid,” the General realizes aloud, “Send a squad to the wreckage!” He turns and makes for the door, but the Knights of Ren follow closely. “Our orders are clear. Capture the droid if we can, but destroy it if we must.”

“This is an unacceptable failure, General,” Ap’lek begins, her voice low and dangerous, “Rest assured, the Supreme Leader will know who is responsible for this. And I find it difficult to place my trust in any more of your Storm Troopers, as far is our map is concerned.”

“I won’t have you questioning my methods,” he spits, defensively.

“You’re obviously skilled at committing high treason,” Kylo observes coolly, “Perhaps Leader Snoke should consider using a clone army.”

The General stops, and rounds on the pair, furiously. “My men are exceptionally trained. Programmed from birth.”

Kylo squares up to him. “Then they should have no problem retrieving the droid,” he counters, “Unharmed.”

The General’s gaze flits across his masked face, eyes narrowing venomously. “Careful, Ren, that your personal interests do not interfere with orders from Leader Snoke.”

She’s filled with the urge to hurt this man. Standing on his bridge in all his ineptitude, shouting orders that mean nothing, accomplishing nothing. Instead she steps between the two, raising a gloved hand to hover like a threat above the General’s throat. Fear flickers through his eyes, even as he squares up to her.

“We need that map,” she impresses in a low voice, leaning in so that his nose nearly touches the cold steel of her helmet, “For your sake, I suggest you get it.”

As quickly as she’d leapt upon him, she withdraws, beckoning curtly for Kylo to follow. They sweep out of the room, a flurry of black cloaks, leaving the seething General in their wake.


	4. Chapter 4

“Today is the end of the Republic. The end of a regime which acquiesces to disorder.”

Kylo Ren stands on the promenade, on the surface of Starkiller Base, and quietly seethes as Hux roars to the sea of Storm Troopers. He has no patience for this overly-rehearsed speech. No patience for the theater of it. The Galaxy would have five fewer planets, by now, if it weren’t for this posturing. And what is the point, anyway, of bellowing inspiration and philosophy to an already-brainwashed army? It sets Kylo’s teeth on edge. It frustrates him.

“At this very moment, in a system far from here, the New Republic _lies_ to the _Galaxy_! While secretly supporting the treachery of the loathsome Resistance!”

Ap’lek steps up beside him, silent and graceful as ever, cloaked and masked as he is. She can feel the red-hot bolts of fury crackling from her companion. But unlike Kylo, she finds herself moved. The speech is brilliant, it is musical and rallying. Intoxicating. For the first time, she sees real power in Armitage Hux.

“Ten seconds,” Kylo murmurs, his voice low and distorted by his helmet, “Ten seconds, and then I’m going to kill him, and give the firing order myself.”

“You don’t mean that,” she states definitively.

“I might.”

“You don’t. Say it, if you must. If it makes you feel better. But don’t lie to me.”

His face twitches with anger beneath his mask.

“This fierce machine which you have built,” Hux continues, voice like music, “Upon which we stand, will bring an end to the Senate! To their cherished fleet! And _all_ remaining systems will _bow_ to the First Order, and will remember this as the _last day of the Republic_!”

His voice echoes and fades out over the crowd, vibrations thinning in the air. It makes her throat tighten with excitement, makes her head swim with something fevered and unnamed.

The Storm Troopers snap to a salute, a sea of white in eerie unison. Something in the air changes, some electric thing that was not there before suddenly springs to life all around them. Ap’lek feels it. She knows that Kylo can feel it, too.

The General roars, “ _FIRE_!”

The army turns to watch as the thick shaft of blistering, red light slices through the sky. They watch as it splits into five distinct beams: the hand of Armitage Hux reaching out across the Galaxy to tighten like a fist around the Hosnian system.

For Ap’lek Ren, the feeling is overwhelming. Like a single bolt of concentrated fear, agony, and horror, mainlined straight into base of her skull. Her eyes roll back, she has to take a steadying step to remain upright. Billions of voices all cry out in pain, the sound is a deafening roar echoing through her skull, and all at once, they are silenced. The sensation shimmers out from her brainstem in delicious, searing waves, crawling across her skin like a fire in a dead forest, and she devours it all. She drinks it in like a woman dying of thirst. _Absolving_. Her fingertips burn momentarily from the sheer thrill.

“I could fuck him,” Ap’lek gasps, as Hux turns to smirk at the pair.

She can nearly feel Kylo flinch beside her. “What?”

“I could fuck him for that,” she repeats, stepping around behind her companion to watch as the General’s eyes turn skyward in triumph. “In this moment, he is so beautiful to me.”

Kylo wants to watch the planets’ destruction. It’ll be minutes before they see the glow. He wants to stand here, on the promenade, and linger in the heat of that red beam as it rips through space and air, rending earth apart and vaporizing seas in its wake. But Ap’lek is making him sick. _Hux_ is making him sick.

He turns away, storms towards his fighter.

“Where are you going?” she calls after him.

“Leaving.”

She squares up to him in frustration. “You flew me down here, you’ll—”

“Fly back with Hux.”

When the General strides onto his transport vessel, all of the pride and triumph swelling in his chest abruptly turns sour. _She’s_ in here, sitting in _his chair_ as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he snaps, as the door seals behind him, “Get out.”

She stands gracefully. “You have my sincere congratulations, General. You’ve done exceedingly well.”

“I’ve done my duty to the Galaxy,” he dismisses. He’ll accept no praise from this witch.

She’s ready with a swift, confident negation. “No. Not just duty. Today, you’ve achieved immortality.”

He furrows his brow, outwardly disapproving. But inside, he cannot deny the small rush of pride. _Immortality_. He hadn’t thought of that word, yet. And he likes it. Oh, does he ever like it.

“I am not Kylo Ren,” she reassures.

Hux blinks at her for a moment, weighing how to proceed.

The pilot peers curiously around his seat. “Sir?”

The General gives him a curt nod, and the ship begins to rumble to life and lift away from the surface.

“No,” he sneers, looking her up and down, “You certainly are not Kylo Ren.”

Kylo, mad dog though he is, has predictable motivations. Transparent agendas, despite his best efforts at subterfuge. Ap’lek seems, to General Hux, more like a snake that has slithered into their midst. Cold, calculating, and silent. _Until she decides to spring, and you find yourself bleeding out between her jaws._

And what good is it, having someone here who can control Kylo, if no one can control _her_?

 _Perhaps I could control her_.

“Please,” she gestures towards his chair.

He cocks an eyebrow. “It’s no use trying your mind tricks on me, Ren.”

“You wound me, Armitage,” she replies, “Those would be of no use against someone so strong-minded.”

He can’t tell if she’s mocking him or not. Frustration mounting, he brushes past her and settles into his chair. “Don’t use my name.”

“Why not? You’re welcome to use mine.”

The thought of uttering that strange, alien name makes him sick. Almost as sick as he gets hearing _his_ name from _her_. “We use titles on this ship,” he snaps, “ _Rank_.”

She’s ready with another quick parry. “If that were true, you would call me Lord Ren.”

Hux snarls with frustration. “What are you _doing_ in here? What do you _want_?”

It happens before he can prepare himself. Standing amidst a backdrop of glittering stars, she brushes her hood back, slips her gloved fingers beneath the edge of her helmet, and then she’s lifting it away, and he sees her face for the first time.

Not human. But certainly not disfigured. In fact, far from it.

It’s a strange combination of features: her wide, severe jaw, cheekbones like knife blades. Eyes set deep into her long, noble face, maybe too far apart. Thick, shaped brows, leading so gracefully down to a distracting, uniquely-shaped nose. He lingers on those full, inhuman lips, bisected by their silver ring. Lips that make him wonder. Taken separately, the features would seem strange and unattractive. But together (loathe though he is to admit it) they make for a haughty, eerily beautiful visage. Even with the tattoo down the left side of her face.

Dathomirian, he realizes at once. _That’s_ the damnable accent, it’s Ul’Zabrak.

Hux looks her in the eye. Those shapely, shining, silver eyes, she has something red smudged beneath them. They flit across his face and then down, down, down, stopping to linger—

“What do you want?” he repeats, trying to ignore the thrill and curiosity building in his chest.

“Not so smart as he looks, after all.” She gives him a half-smile, a view of fang-like canines. “How disappointing.”

Without the mask, her voice is dusky and smooth, like silk and smoke. Hypnotic.

Scowling, the General sits back in his chair, taking a silver cigarette case from his pocket and slipping one between his lips. Like everything he does, it’s an easy, practiced, confident motion. Ap’lek raises a gloved hand towards him, and with an upward flick of her finger, the cigarette lights. It surprises him. He takes it from his mouth to inspect it carefully, as though he were afraid it would hurt him.

Shadow Magic. _Kriffing Dathomirians._

“An amusing parlor trick,” he remarks, taking a deep, stilling drag from his cigarette. Something familiar upon which to ground himself.

But she’s quick to reply. “I’ll do more than amuse you.”

He narrows his eyes, inspecting her carefully through the blue-grey veil of exhaled smoke. “I thought you Force-users were meant to abstain.”

 _There_ , he thinks with a pang, _I’ve said it aloud. Made it real._

Ap’lek laughs. It’s a sound that both excites and terrifies him. “ _Abstain_ ,” she almost mocks. She moves like a predator, setting one foot directly in front of the other as she approaches. And then, graceful as ever, she slips her legs either side of his thighs and settles into his lap.

The scent of him proves oddly sweet: his cologne, something she’d never noticed before. Something she’d never been close enough to notice, until now. The faintest spray of freckles is just visible on his skin, ghostly pale for all the years he’s spent shipside. The translucent gold of surprisingly long lashes strikes her as almost incongruously delicate, compared to his cold eyes. They’re eyes with fine lines at their corners, and crescents of purple beneath. She recognizes the gentle wounds of sleepless nights; they are familiar to her, too. The deeper ones are worn inside. Her gaze comes to rest on his lips, deeply pink and generous enough, she realizes, now that he isn’t scowling.

Hux leans back, trying in vain to maintain some distance between them. But, as much as he may resent it, this is beginning to interest him.

She runs her hands up the sides of his neck. “Abstinence is for spineless Jedi,” she whispers in his ear, “The Sith were hedonists, the first tenet of their code is passion. When they saw something they wanted, they took it.”

His skin is beginning to feel warm, the high, stiff collar of his uniform suddenly stifling. He shifts uncomfortably beneath her, frustrated by his body’s betrayal, hoping she doesn’t notice. “The Sith are dead.”

She notices. “Are they?” All at once, her hand is between his legs, and he feels her forcing her way back between his eyes. Kylo has read his mind before; Snoke, too. He remembers the lancing pain across the top of his skull, moving in a red and burning path, cleaving and cauterizing thoughts and memories in its wake. His mind invaded, logic severed, darkness closing in. But this is different. A red glow is spreading at the edge of his mind like a solar corona. The eclipse shifts, the shadow yielding to bright, blinding light and heat, and he’s crushed by it. Overcome by a desire so heavy it forces the breath from his lungs.

He feels his cock beneath her palm, suddenly straining and ready, but now, he also feels her hand as though it were attached to his own wrist. He feels her need pulsing in the pit of his stomach, in tandem with his own. He feels things he hasn’t the anatomy to feel.

“I think you’re a hedonist, too,” she whispers, her voice bathing his mind like sweet smoke. She’s everywhere. Within him, all around him. The heat, the crushing, blinding heat. Clench and throb. “But you spend your life beset by groveling inferiors. It’s so lonely at the top, Armitage. So cold in space. How long since you’ve had someone to give you any warmth?”

His voice shudders and halts as he tries to argue. “Don’t— You keep my name out of your _mmm_ —”

She forces herself deeper still, and he falls silent, melting back into his chair. He can feel her heart beating in his chest, feel his beating in hers.

“Shh.” Her cheek slips against his, those soft, full lips brushing against the shell of his ear as she speaks.

 _My lips_ , he thinks madly, scrambling for any clear thought upon which to cling, _and_ _my ear. But hers, too, somehow— Ours, perhaps, ours—_

“It takes an exceptional human man to pique my interest,” she murmurs, beginning to massage her hand up and down his length. The neglected cigarette finally slips from his fingers, sending a shower of sparks skipping across the floor. His head falls back. A ragged moan tears from his throat. He wants to grab hold of her, run his hands up her back, but his limbs are frozen.

“Ren, the pilot—” he protests feebly, even as he pushes his hips up into her hand.

“ _Power_ ,” she whispers, “Power is what I like. And today, you’re the most powerful being in the Galaxy.”

His eyes flutter and roll back. _The most powerful being in the Galaxy_. He could’ve come simply from hearing her say it.

All at once, the spell is broken, as the transport ship slams into a hard landing in the Finalizer’s hangar.

“Sorry about that, General,” the pilot calls back, “It’s more crowded in here than usual, I had to muscle us some space.”

Ap’lek withdraws from his mind, but not his body. He blinks up at her, expression hardening with each passing second as he comes back to his senses.

“Sir?”

His eyes flit over her shoulder, and he makes eye contact with the pilot. Panic hits him like a bucket of ice water. With a rough palm to her chest, he shoves her away. She springs back on light feet, never so much as losing her balance. She doesn’t even acknowledge the pilot. Instead, her gaze remains fixed on the General.

He wants to slap that haughty, triumphant look from her face. He wants to wrap his hands around her throat until she stops that infernal smiling.

“You’re a _thing_!” he spits, making a big spectacle of straightening his uniform, “You’re a construct, a _machine_ , they assembled you in a _laboratory_!”

She raises her hand towards him like a warning, her expression hardening dangerously. “Watch your mouth.”

“Whatever possessed the Supreme Leader to endow a _half-breed witch_ with such cybernet—” The words catch in his throat, and he’s choking, panicking. Struggling like a prey animal in a trap. And Ap’lek’s grip is only tightening.

“HEY!”

The pilot draws his blaster, scrambling towards her, but she slams him into his control panel with a casual wave of her free hand. She draws Hux in close, the toes of his boots dragging across the floor. The fear he feels is so visceral, so completely consuming. He knows Kylo wouldn’t kill him. He cannot say so of her.

“Watch your mouth,” she repeats, her nose inches from his, “ _Armitage_.”

And then, as quickly as she’d been upon him, he’s free. He falls hard to the floor, heaving and gulping the glorious, clear air, and by the time he looks up, she’s gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly, though, isn't that how we all felt after that speech?


	5. Chapter 5

In the quiet hours of Gamma shift, long after he’s relinquished command, General Hux lingers in the open doorway to his own quarters. Biding his time. He’s smoking, again. He’s been smoking all evening.

Aboard the _Finalizer_ , Ap’lek Ren exists like a specter; everywhere and nowhere. Hidden as she is by that damnable mask, and invisible to detection when she had no desire to be seen. Sometimes, it’s easy to forget she’s even there. Until she comes stalking through some corridor or another without warning, terrifying people with her sudden and silent appearances.

As if one of them wasn’t bad enough.

The location of her assigned quarters is public knowledge, but Hux does not have a professional excuse to be seen visiting. Nor is he stupid enough to believe that she simply sits quietly in her chambers when she isn’t either haunting him or wrangling Kylo. So, after returning to the _Finalizer_ , he had pored through miles of logs and assignments and reservations, watched hours surveillance footage at maximum speed, finally locating Ap’lek Ren in the empty spaces. And then he built a maze. He shut down lifts, closed corridors for maintenance. Trapping her.

She’ll have to walk right past him. From Kylo’s quarters to her own, she will now have no choice but to walk right by. The only thing to do now is wait.

Hux hates himself for this. He hates what he’s doing, what he’s been driven to. But he can’t stop himself. He had wrestled with it all evening, entirely unable to revel in his own great victory for how horribly distracted he was. This woman _(no, not a woman, a_ thing _)_ seemed to have permanently taken up residence in his brain. How long had they been touching, aboard the transport ship? 60 seconds, perhaps less? He wants to feel it for _hours_. He wants to feel _her_ again, as he had before. He wants her to feel _him_.

He’s already hard. He doesn’t even know when she’ll come, _if_ she’ll come at all. And he’s defiantly, painfully hard.

Those distinctive footfalls, those spaced-out, mechanical footfalls, begin to sound in the distance. And they’re growing louder. All at once, his heart is hammering. But he does not waver.

For her part, Ap’lek humors him. _Little human man, he must think himself so clever_. Compared to her, he is a blunt instrument, devoid of any grace and subtlety. She had sensed his frenetic scheming and plotting all evening, observing it with a kind of detached amusement as she went about her day. It made for such entertaining background noise. She knew he wouldn’t be able to keep away. And now, it is with a sense of great personal triumph that she is walking into his clumsily-laid trap.

She has had lovers before. Human, of course, and Zabrak. Mirialan and Twi’lek. She even spent an entire shore leave with an exceptionally gorgeous Force-adept Nagai, once. Both so young and powerful, they never even knew each other’s names. It has always helped her find an outlet for her darker emotions, and in that way, she feels that sex without attachment strengthens her connection to the Dark Side. It frees her, it gives her control. This dance is familiar to her, and comforting.

Hux announces himself as she crosses in front of his door, unaware of how unnecessary it is. “You,” he says, his face illuminated by the orange glow of his cigarette. “Get in here.”

Ap’lek smiles ravenously beneath her helmet. He’s stripped down to a white singlet, but is still wearing the trousers of his uniform. And his gloves. She likes that. She can see now that he’s slimmer than his immaculately tailored coats would suggest. All long, graceful lines, with softly muscled arms, and a delightfully slender waist. She wonders what else he’s hiding. _No matter_ , she thinks, _I’ll know soon._

She brushes past him, into the room. It’s completely decadent. Two stories, like a loft, draped with First Order banners and Imperial tapestry, so lavishly furnished. He has books, shelves upon shelves of them, and she finds that thrilling. The far wall is nothing more than Transparisteel, facing out into the endless void of space. A backdrop far too opulent for what they intend to do to one another. Then again, they’re nothing if not vainglorious.

Ap’lek can’t help but smile. The stars are such lucky witnesses to what is about to occur.

Hux glances surreptitiously up and down corridor, checking to make sure they hadn’t been seen. And then, with uncharacteristic carelessness, he flicks his cigarette into the hall and seals the door behind them.

In the small space between heartbeats, she descends upon him. Somewhere in the interim, she’d removed her helmet, and now those full, cruel lips have collided hungrily with his. Hard kisses. Kisses that could bruise him. He wraps a hand around the back of her neck, fingernails carving crescents into her skin. Forcing her close. She opens her mouth, and he slips his tongue past her lips, tilting his head to the side so he can get closer, plunge deeper. A violent clash of tongues and teeth. If he could drink from her throat, he would. She hears it. It’s a disarming thought for the both of them.

Ap’lek decides that the sweetness of it sickens her. That’s not the point of this, and the _human man_ needs to understand that. She bites down hard, sinking one of those sharpened teeth into his tongue. Hux yelps in pain and surprise, whipping them around to slam her into the wall. His forearm spans across her chest, holding her still.

“Don’t do that,” he pants, using his free hand to rake the hair back from his face in a quick, frustrated gesture. He can taste his own blood, feel it running down his chin. _Kriff, she really bit me._

At once, her gloved hand is wrapped around his throat. Not hard enough to choke him, not hard enough to really hurt. But enough that his heart pounds a little louder in his ears, and his head begins to swim. He stumbles backwards, but Ap’lek pursues, lifting him until he’s standing on his toes.

_“I’ll do whatever I want.”_

Hux can’t be sure if she’d said it aloud, or if she’d implanted the thought directly into his brain.

And he hates how much he likes it. The General is not one for gentle bedsport, he never has been. The type of man who would wipe an entire star system from existence is not the type of man who holds to tenderness. He makes love like he makes war: violent, and unyielding. Taking, and giving nothing back. But never have his conquests (male or female, but always human) done anything but submit. Never has someone fought back, until now. And, despite himself, he’s drunk on it.

Casting off every instinct of self-preservation and propriety, he yields to her. He presses his eyes shut hard, taking her free hand and bringing her gloved palm to his face.

“Do it,” he nearly begs, lips teasing at the sliver of pale skin between her glove and her sleeve, smearing it with blood, “I want it again, I have to have it.”

“That’s good,” she breathes, running her hand up his cheek, steering and tilting his head back. “I like you _begging_.”

“I— _Oh_ …” His eyes flutter closed, he can feel the heat of her licking at the edges of his mind, encroaching like the embers of a forest fire. “Please,” he murmurs, pawing desperately at her hands, “Please.”

Ap’lek does not acquiesce, not yet. Instead, she holds him in suspended animation, balanced on the event horizon of this thing he so desperately craves.

He wants her inside of him, as he wants to be inside of her.

She whips them around again, slamming his back into the wall just as he’d done to her. Still holding him at bay, she drags her teeth along the smooth, pale skin of his throat, letting the smell of him fill her head. The distilled, concentrated iteration of what he’d been aboard the transport ship. She can feel his unguarded moan vibrating against her mouth. Her hands slip up beneath his singlet, fingertips crawling along the lean muscle of his torso until she’s pulling it off over his head, casting it away.

He follows suit, his shaking hands tearing her gloves away so he can press his nose to her inner wrist and breathe her in. He sees, for the first time, that her nails are long and black. Like talons. Fingers etched with delicate tattoos. He likes that. But he does not pause for long. Passion beats out finesse, and he fumbles desperately with the heavy, black folds of her cloak, her robe. With dangerous recklessness, he unclips her weapon holster and casts her twin blades aside. But no matter how much he removes, there always seems to be more. More buckles, more straps, more layers to peel away. In his frenzy, his hand catches in her cowl and it rips.

“Idiot!” she snaps, shoving him away by the chest. With practiced, graceful hands, she sets about removing her own clothing. “If I wanted to watch you struggle with your own ineptitude, I’d stand on your bridge all day!”

Anger and humiliation flare up in his chest, telegraphing his intent for only a split-second before he acts. He wraps a gloved hand around her throat, hauling her upright, lining her up, and then he whips the back of his free hand across her face. The air is forced from her lungs as a sharp, clean sting prickles to life along her cheekbone. The blow had torn at the jewelry in her lip, making it bleed.

“ _You can’t talk to me like that_!” he roars. His voice is loud and carrying; his orator’s voice. The music that drew her to him in the first place. It thrills her.

But it is an offense that cannot go unpunished. Ap’lek strikes him back, so hard that it makes her hand sting. The General’s head snaps to the side, and he cries out in shock. And when he meets her gaze again, she sees the fury crackling like so much lightening behind those cold, blue eyes. Dangerous. Exciting. His mouth is bleeding again.

He’ll show her. With rough, reckless hands, he tears into the rest of her clothing. Shredding it apart, even as she tries to beat him away. She’s thin. Wiry. Breakable. But the more he sees of her, the more he decides that her shapes are pleasing. Her body is a mass of knotted scar tissue, from the hollow of between her hipbones to the peaks of her maybe-too-broad shoulders. Healed wounds, pale and sinuous, crisscrossing over the pale expanse of her skin to form a starmap of all the horror she'd seen. 

But the General likes it. He likes the danger that it suggests. And he means to add a few systems of his own. He wants to devour her, and so he does, sinking his teeth into her nipple, only for a second before she cries out in pain and hits him on the side of the head. 

“This—” Hux snarls, wrapping one hand around her jaw while he reaches around to tug at her bun, “I hate this, get rid of it.”

Despite her struggling, he manages to succeed. Her hair cascades to her waist in a velvet, blue-black curtain. How she manages to coil it all up and hide it beneath her helmet, he cannot pretend to understand. He gathers it behind her back, wraps it around his fist like a rope, and exchanges their positions once more. Pinning her to the wall, pulling on her hair until her neck is craned backwards, he grinds his length along the hollow of her hip. He can feel her gasping and quivering against him, and that makes him feel powerful.

Never once does it occur to Hux that she is allowing this. That she could kill him at any point, should she become bored of him.

Hux slides his legs wider, finding his footing, rutting against her in quick, frenetic thrusts. He shivers. The front of his trousers is wet, beginning to cling to the damp slick at his groin, snagging and sliding, and he gasps and shudders every time Ap’lek rocks into him and the seam drags over the head of his cock.

His fingertips dig into her jaw, forcing their way between her bloodied lips. He presses down on her tongue, making her choke. But she’s not beating him away. She slips a hand down his bare torso, taking him by the waistband, dragging him closer. Her eyes roll back, he can’t get enough of the sight. He wants to give her something else to choke on, the hateful creature. He kisses her around his own fingers, writhing against her in a frenzy, and then he gasps, quick and startled and desolate—

_Is this what you want?_

She’s done toying with him, the poor, Human man.

 _Yes,_ he thinks _, yes, yes, yes._ His fingers slip from her lips, leaving a glistening trail down her chin. She’s not breaking in, not lacerating her way into his mind, but somehow blooming from within him. The wheel of stars expands, and he succumbs to it.

He opens his eyes to discover that Ap’lek is suddenly everywhere. Inside his body, inside his mind, just as she’d been on the transport ship, but multiplied tenfold. He knows, somehow, that they’re occupying this intangible space together. So, he reaches out, confused by the sensation, mimicking what he feels her doing to him. Swimming through the warmth of her mind, letting the current take him. Trying to. He stretches past the superficial, physical pleasure, and something fractures and gives way. A door opening on the surface of the sun.

“That’s it,” she coaxes, slipping a hand up the back of his neck to cradle his skull in her hand.

He blinks, dazed, and realizes that she’s walking him backwards, across the room.

The edge of the bed frame collides with the backs of his knees, and his legs collapse beneath him. He falls hard on his back, letting his arms slip up above his head. She’s tearing into his trousers, ripping them down and away. When his cock springs free, she makes a throaty, ravenous sound. It’s a surprisingly elegant thing, for a Human: long and shapely, the surrounding hair well-groomed. It bobs above his stomach, dripping and pulsing with each beat of his heart. She wants to devour him. She kneels down, runs her tongue up the underside of his shaft, and he cries out in shock and desperation. When she withdraws, and begins crawling her way up his body, he’s back to begging.

“Yes,” he pants, “Please, I want it, I— _Oh_.”

Her voice licks at the edges of his mind like fire. “ _Then take it. Lazy slut_.”

He can barely hear her. Barely _move_. His head feels like it’s been turned inside out, he’s only just clinging to comprehension.

She shakes him roughly by the shoulder. “ _I’sharee aeosr?”_ (Are you listening?)

Still, nothing.

 _Human men_ , she seethes, frustrated. For of all the vicious, bloodthirsty creatures in the Galaxy, she’s stuck here, surrounded by such fragile things as Human men. She wants him wound up and furious again, not this pliant, submissive, needy thing. And so, she pulls back, only a little.

Blinking through the boiling, lightheaded delirium, Hux feels her recede just enough for him to control his own limbs. It’s not her, alone, anymore, but the two of them in tandem. He reaches out experimentally, into the invisible space they both occupy. Testing the boundary. Snarling, Ap’lek straddles his hips, bends to press her lips to his smooth, bare chest.

_!! Armitage !!_

Her teeth come together around one of his nipples, and his blissful catatonia finally breaks. He cries out in pain, taking a handful of her hair and wrenching her away from his chest. Hot, reactive. A solar flare.

He bites a kiss against her lips, and in an instant, he’s rolled them over, muscled her to her stomach. He kicks her ankles apart, spreading his thighs between hers.

“Don’t do that again,” he snarls, but his voice is wrecked, breathy; he has to lean down and kiss her again, maybe to cover it, maybe he just wants to kiss her. He tries not to know the answer. Instead, he grips the back of her neck and shoves her face into the pillow. He hopes she can’t breathe.

His cock is pressed between her legs. He can feel her pushing and straining beneath him, trying to take it inside of her. He doesn’t want to wait. He wants to slam into her, slam into himself.

But it’s the first time he’s felt her beg.

Finally, Hux removes his gloves. He can’t bear not to touch her with his bare hands for one more second, so he bends forward and rakes his nails down her back. He sinks his teeth into her the muscle of her flank, he wants to consume her. He spreads her tight slit apart with his thumbs; not quite Human, but not entirely alien either. _Fuck it, you’ve come this far. It’d be waste, not to find out._ He plunges his tongue into her, and his eyes roll back, a ragged moan tearing from his throat. There’s something electric in her taste. Something dangerous. He feels her tighten around his tongue.

Open mouthed, gasping, she tosses her head back. Her curtain of hair whips past his face, annoying him. He wraps it around his hand again, giving it a sharp, warning tug.

“You’re stalling.”

“ _Stalling_ ,” he snaps, self-conscious and defensive. He hates that she’s right.

In a bold, impulsive move, he reaches across the bed for the discarded trousers of his uniform, and slips the belt from the loops. Furious, he slings the belt around her neck, and hauls her up onto her hands and knees. Finally, she screams, but the sound is strangled in her throat. Somehow, he likes that better. Because this is where she belongs: at the end of a leash that’s clenched in his fist.

He can feel the tightness, the pressure building in his head as the garotte tightens around her neck. Holding the loose end of the belt in one hand, he presses the head of his cock against her opening. For a moment, time stands still. He’s thrown so violently from his body, and he sees a view of himself from above, balanced on the precipice of this frightening, unfamiliar, thrilling thing. He knows she’s showing it to him. Goading him on. Challenging him. And so, he parts her with no gentleness, and sinks into her.

 _Tight, tight,_ tight _. Fuck._

His vision goes white. Heat; crushing, blinding heat, collapsing in on him. He feels both sensations in tandem. Penetrating and being penetrated. Simultaneously panting and choking. It’s more than his mind can process. Ap’lek knows it. But she does not ease back.

“ _Move_!” she gasps.

He’s powerless to refuse. He yanks on the belt, hauls her up higher. And, with a hand on her hip, starts to fuck her.

The glorious culmination of an entire day’s fretting and suffering.

Each thrust sends electricity spiking through every nerve in his body, expanded by the phantom sensation of taking his own cock into his own tight heat. Pulsing ribbons of pleasure tighten in his lower belly, threatening orgasm.

Ap’lek lets it swallow her whole, and then sends it back to him as hard as she can. She wants him to know how good he feels, how well he's doing.

 _You're so good_ , she tells him, _I've never had better._

Hux bites down on his lip so hard that he draws blood. He slings one leg up, planting his foot on the mattress, forcing himself deeper. He’s striking something new and different inside her, now, he can feel it. Something that makes the pleasure spike higher and higher with each thrust. Always building, never receding.

"Look at you," she gasps, consumed. "Look at what you can do—This _power_ —"

He gives the belt a threatening jerk. “Shut up.”

Oddly enough, she obeys.

_Most powerful being in the Galaxy._

All sensation blurs, looping infinitely. His desire peaks in a delicious frenzy as he comprehends that Ap’lek is vicariously experiencing the stretch of her own tight, hot cunt, both inside and out.

 _Immortal_.

They move together in a finer, more perfect rhythm than either of them has ever felt before. They sink into each other; falling, collapsing. Splitting apart and re-forming until the boundaries between them are destroyed entirely.

“Please,” she’s gasping, “Please, please.” Or maybe it’s him. He can’t tell. What’s the difference? Was there _ever_ a difference?

“I want your hands on me,” she commands, and this time he knows it’s her, “When you come.”

He whips the belt from around her neck, casting it aside, and flips her bodily onto her back. With one hand pressed down over her throat and the other fisted in the sheets, he settles his weight onto her with no consideration. He slams into her, over and over and over again. Selfish, chasing his own pleasure. Hurting her. Hurting himself.

“Yes,” she pants, her voice breathy and desolate, vibrating against his hand as she reaches out to grip his flank, “Yes, yes, yes—”

Hux slips two fingers back into her open mouth, craning her neck back, holding her head tight against the bed. Her lips seal around them, sucking hard. His body spins out pleasure in snapping, electric impulses. He’s drowning in the linked sensations: his own, real and tangible and familiar, and the strange, all-consuming ones pulsing into him from his lover. He hopes his hipbones bruise her.

And then he begins to feel her as he had never felt her before. Colors he can taste, sounds he can see, all morphing into emotions and memories. He can’t stop. He’s getting glimpses, now, of all the hidden parts her, while her defenses are down. Suffering beyond all possibility of endurance. Agony. Hatred, rage. Sacrifice. Deep, desperate loneliness, mixed with something unnamed, unrequited.

The flash of Kylo’s face.

Hux is inside her, now, as she is inside him, as he is inside her. Cyclical.

“Infinite,” he gasps aloud.

His ( _their?_ ) orgasm is building, he can feel it; a shared exaltation, a fuse burning down, pushing them closer to perihelion.

He wouldn’t be able to hold it back, even if he wanted to.

They come together like the death of a star. A supernova of mind and body fusing together to form a void in the universe where everything and nothing exist in tandem. Past, present, and future occur simultaneously. A desperate, ecstatic sound tears from Hux’s throat as he pours himself into her in six blinding, erratic jerks of his cock. He’s so deep that it hurts her. Hurts _him_. But he does not relent. He clings to his lover, drowning in the unfamiliar pulses of her climax that last long after his have faded, until the surging finally subsides, and he's thrust into darkness.


	6. Chapter 6

Hux is thrown back into consciousness, and the first thing he's aware of is the tandem rhythm of their heartbeats. Then the warmth of her palms splayed against his back. His capacity for thought returns, and he finds them clinging to one another, sweat-slick and still panting in each other’s arms. He mustn’t have been out for long. From what he can tell, he’d passed out right on top of her. And, strangely, his hand seems to have slipped from her lips to instead hold her cheek against his. It’s as if, even as he was falling and dying, overstimulated, he had tried to stay connected to her. To remain as one, in whatever tangible way he could control.

He pushes himself up, still breathless, and when he gazes down into those impossible, silver-white eyes, he’s struck suddenly with the urge to kiss her. To cup her skull in his palm and draw her up so he can press his lips to hers. It seems such a strange thing to want, after what they’d done to one another. So disarmingly… _Intimate_.

He resists the urge.

Ap’lek rolls her eyes and squirms away. He shudders and cries out, spine collapsing like string as she slips him from her body. Hux falls heavily to the mattress, heart still pounding in his temples. For a short flicker of time, the desire flashes in his chest: he could reach out after her and run his fingertips along the smooth skin of her back; a bright, pale swath against his black sheets. Given the choice, he would be inside that skin again.

He would destroy these pointless, physical barriers that now keep them apart.

He would tear her chest open with his bare hands, if he had to; just for one more moment inside her.

And, in the blink of an eye, she’s gone from him. Their breathing changes, and their heartbeats slip out of sync. _Forever_ , he thinks bitterly. Equilibrium restored, his body once again his own, Hux suddenly finds himself crushed. The burning need for this communion was born of a desire for an intimacy that is only possible through his lover’s considerable power. He will never feel this from another.

He sees, now, that it had been a preposterous, lust-fueled fantasy, thinking that he could be joined to her more permanently.

Still, the memory of that violent, rapturous merging lingers his consciousness. _I’ll never break free of her_ , he realizes morosely. _She’ll be in me until I die, like a stain on my mind._

_A stain on my heart._

Unmoved by the mess of thoughts caught up in Hux’s head, Ap’lek lifts herself away from him to perch cross-legged on the edge of the bed. She sits with her back to her lover, ignoring him entirely. She should’ve known better than to fuck a Human man. She thought she _did_ know better. Because, now, he’s annoying her.

She considers wiping his memory. It would be a simple affair: fingers to his temple, a quick Mind Shard. He’d wake up tomorrow morning bruised and bloody and baffled. She could even do it again, if she wanted. Draw him in, make him want her, fuck him senseless, and then erase the memory. Over and over, until he goes completely mad trying to justify his soreness and injuries and all the missing hours.

She’s done it before. It’s fun.

But no, she thinks. That would be a distraction. It would almost, _almost_ be attachment. And Ap’lek Ren does not abide attachment.

With a graceful, beckoning finger, she floats the General’s silver cigarette case from the pocket of his uniform across the room. With unconscious, practiced ease, she slips one of them between her lips and lights it with the touch of her fingertip.

Hux scowls. “Do you know _any_ other Magick?”

“Yes,” she says, “But fire is the most fun.”

He rolls his eyes, settling onto his back and letting his eyes fall shut. “Well, keep it under control,” he snaps, “If I find so much as a single burn mark on any of my things, I’ll have that kriffing ship of yours thrown piecemeal into the trash compacter.”

 _Himself, again,_ Ap’lek realizes mournfully. Her heart sinks.

“Take that tone with me again and I’ll kill you,” she says calmly, tilting her head side to side to crack her neck.

The General knows to pick his battles. But he’s suddenly in the mood to bicker with her, so he picks a new one. “I’ve never seen you smoke,” he needles, pointlessly.

She takes a deep, absolving drag, exhaling a blue-grey cloud into the air above her. “And six hours ago, you’d never seen my face. The wonders may never cease for you, Armitage.”

He scowls, settling deeper into the bed.

“The last cigarette I smoked, I shared with a boy named Ben Solo,” she impulsively reveals, her voice no more than a whisper. Though she doesn’t know why, she is suddenly sad.

He cranes his neck to look at her, scrutinizing her through narrowed eyes. “You were at the Jedi Praxeum,” he realizes aloud, “On Yavin 4.”

Stony silence. She takes another drag. She runs a hand through her hair, combing it away from her face, letting it cascade down her back.

Though he seems to be taking all of this in his ever-confident stride, the truth is that Hux is still struggling to process what they’ve done to one another. The experience they just shared is one not meant for a Force-null mind like his, and he’s still reeling from it. But confusion and conflict and damnable, budding attachment aside, Hux has never been one for post-coital sweetness. Never before, and certainly not now. Not with _her_.

After a moment, he settles back into the bed and closes his eyes once more. “You love him,” he states definitively, “You tried to hide it, but I caught a glimpse.”

The remark hits her like a punch in the gut, terror and denial blooming through her chest like a poisonous bruise.

“Nothing quite like the image of that great, hulking beast to put me off,” Hux sneers, lacing his fingers together beneath his head, “Right at the end.”

She rolls her eyes, though he can’t see it. “Oh, yes, Armitage, I could tell you were so very _put off_.”

“Watch your mouth.”

She regrets this. All of this. _Stupid_ , she tells herself. _Stupid, and careless_. _You know better_.

“This isn’t going to happen again,” she suddenly announces.

He takes it like another slap across his face, wincing away from her despite himself. He’d put that together, already. She didn’t need to say it.

“And I don’t care what you think about it,” she adds. Rubbing salt in the wound.

His heart sinks, that carefully-composed façade of dominance and control beginning to crack. And then he feels her again, like light fingertips brushing up the back of his neck before pressing into the base of his skull. Invading.

Ap’lek needs to know if he secretly mourns this ending like she does.

Within him, she finds a loneliness that mirrors her own. Love for his mother, the nobody that she was. Crushing, confusing longing for his cruel father’s regard. A childhood irredeemably stained by violence and abuse. Inadequacy and scraping self-doubt. The patricide he committed remains like a scar across his mind, bisecting him into two distinct halves. The shame of his birth circles back into pride in who he’s become. Accidental bastard, self-made man. An endless loop.

Insatiable ambition. Ruthlessness. But a delicate ego.

And something else, locked away just for her. He’s hidden it so deeply that she can’t even be sure he’s aware of it.

His mind is such a chaotic snarl that Ap’lek wonders for a moment if she’ll be able to withdraw cleanly. If she’ll be able to move on from this without dragging some of him along with her, carrying it like a secret in her chest forever. Like he is for her.

Humiliation flares up in the pit of his stomach. This has gone on long enough.

“I can _feel_ you in there, _get out_ ,” he defensively commands, kicking blindly in her direction. His heel collides with her hip.

Still and silent, she withdraws. Ap’lek crushes the cigarette between her fingers and casts it to the floor. She hopes it annoys him.

 _In another life, perhaps_ , she thinks. _In another universe, on another parallel timeline_ , _we might’ve found a match in each other._

She rises from the bed and crosses the room towards the pile of discarded clothing. Hux watches as she re-dresses: twisting her hair back up into its severe and complicated bun, folding the heavy, black cloth around her body once more.

The bruise on her face remains, like a hurtful reminder. A taunt. The bruise around her neck.

They belong on his skin, too.

She flings the cloak over her shoulders, and the mark on her neck disappears from view. And then she bends to scoop her helmet up off the ground, slipping it back on over her head, and then even the bruise on her face is gone. The General’s throat tightens, as he knows he’ll never lay eyes on it again.

Without another word spoken between them, Ap’lek turns and reaches for the door control. Just before she can leave, Hux snatches his belt from atop the mattress and hurls it across the room towards her. She watches with a kind of mild, detached interest as it crumples ineffectually against the doorframe, the buckle clanging loudly. Unimpressed by this childish display, she turns to look at him. Safe behind her mask.

And there he is, sprawled so awkwardly across the bed, naked and frozen in a half-seated position. His eyes are red-rimmed and shining, his hair a damp and bright ruin. Fire upon ash, chaos and its inevitable, burned-out end. He still has a trail of dried blood running down his chin, and there’s a bruise rising to his cheek where she hit him; the mirror image of her own. She does not need to peer into his mind to know what he is feeling. It’s ebbing from him freely, creeping across the room towards her like frostbite.

“Go, then,” he snaps, rolling away from her, “Get out of my sight.”

Ap’lek turns away, reaches for the door control again.

“And seal that bloody door behind you.”

* * *

The following morning, Kylo and Ap’lek Ren stride onto the bridge, as usual.

Hux has a bruise on his right cheek. His bottom lip is split. She can tell that everyone is either pretending not to notice, or reasonably assuming that Kylo is responsible.

The General looks to Ap’lek, scrutinizing the surface of that blank, unreadable mask.

He wonders what she’s thinking. He wants to know how much she hates him, so that he can predict what she’ll do. She does not yield to him.

After a moment, he digs through his pocket for a cigarette. Just as he slips it between his lips, it lights itself. He scowls, plucking it from his mouth as though it may poison him. His eyes flit briefly to Kylo, and then he holds Ap’lek’s gaze while he flicks it to the ground and crushes it beneath his bootheel, unsmoked.

Kylo watches it all intently, hot betrayal building with each passing beat of his heart.


	7. Chapter 7

The base is collapsing around them, and Kylo is nowhere to be found. Hux and Ap’lek sprint to the meeting chamber, fighting upstream against a flurry of fleeing junior officers. Evacuation sirens blare, red lights flash along the floor and ceiling, setting a panic in the General’s blood. To him, this is a failure. He has no contingency plan for this course of events; it was never supposed to happen. This base was constructed to be infallible, he cannot fathom how this has occurred. But for Ap’lek Ren, this is a victory. Kylo has fulfilled his purpose. He has taken the first step along a path he can no longer turn back from. And she must acknowledge that she is relieved not to have to dispatch him, as Snoke had ordered. Her feelings for him have deepened, in the past days. Intensely. The Resistance has the map, this is true. But she knows that they will lead them to Skywalker. They will draw him out, and she and Kylo can finish what they started. She is perfectly content to chalk Starkiller Base up to collateral damage.

She is still clutching Kylo’s helmet as they grind to a halt before the massive projection of Leader Snoke. The walls rumble forebodingly, chunks of rock cascade from the ceiling, leaving shimmering trails in their wake as they fall through the hologram.

“Supreme Leader,” the General pants, “The fuel cells have ruptured. The collapse of the planet has begun.” His tone is desperate and unregulated. Uncharacteristically so.

“Leave the base at once,” he commands, and the room shakes more intensely at his voice. He turns to Ap’lek. “Find Kylo Ren and bring him to me. It is time to complete his training.”

As they sprint from the room, and the holo of the Supreme Leader sputters and fades in their wake, Hux catches her by the arm.

“’Lek.”

She rounds on him in a rage. “ _What_?” What do you _want_? _What did you just call me?_

His gaze flits across the cold, unfeeling façade of her helmet, measuring the distance between them. His eyes soften for only the briefest of moments before he tamps it down again, blinking it away.

“Nothing,” he snaps, casting her arm away, “You have your orders, get out of my sight.”

Ap’lek leaps into her cockpit of her ship, and it hums with life as the engines power up. Kylo’s helmet is placed on the seat behind her. She takes off amidst a stream of cruisers and escape pods fleeing the base, but she winds her way between them with dangerous precision. He is still down on the planet, she can sense it. _The Darkness will guide me_ , she tells herself confidently. _The Darkness will see us united once more._

She glides low over the snow-laden trees, opening her mind to any sign of him. He is near, and he is alive, this she knows. Ahead, she sees a massive fissure spreading across the surface of the planet. And there is Kylo- balanced on the edge of the gaping maw, his attention fixed on the Millennium Falcon as it jumps into hyperspace in front of her.

He turns as she swoops in above him, and in the red glow of his lightsaber, she can see that his face is streaked with blood and tears. His wild hair whips back as she descends over the fissure and opens the hatch, hovering just close enough for him to reach. She watches over her shoulder as the beam of his lightsaber retracts, and he leaps into the ship, crumpling on the ramp. The door seals again, and she pulls up and away from the collapsing planet.

“The girl and the Storm Trooper have escaped,” he shouts up to her. She can hear the strain in his voice, as he struggles into the gunner’s seat behind her. He is in immense pain.

“I know,” she calls back, “We’re going to rendezvous with Hux. I assume he got away with the _Finalizer_.”

He roars in anger, and she can hear what sounds like his fists pounding against the walls of the cockpit. His voice is raw with overuse. The red bolts of his fury crackle out in every direction, threatening to infect her. She has to try her hardest to shut them out.

“You did well, Kylo!” she calls back, her voice sure and even, “The Supreme Leader is very pleased. As am I.”

His breathing is ragged, but he begins to quiet.

“Be still, _vyshtal’rak_ ,” she soothes, “You did very well.”

They are silent for the remainder of the trip. The _Finalizer_ sends coordinates, and they rendezvous without event, just outside the Ilum system. The fighter is drawn in by a tractor beam, and Ap’lek breathes a sigh of relief when the iris door closes beneath her.

Kylo is nearly unconscious as they disembark. He clings weakly to his helmet as she slings his arm over her shoulder and helps him down the ramp. A few flight engineers cluster in around the ship in their wake.

“Where is the Medbay?” she demands. All the time she’s spent on this ship, and she doesn’t know. One of the engineers gestures vaguely down the hall.

She’s nearly carrying him by the time they reach their destination. The doors part, and they’re greeted by a chaotic scene. Dozens of First Order soldiers in various stages of injury, being tended to by a fleet of droids and Human medical officers. It’s loud. The stench is suppressive.

“I need a medic!” she shouts, still standing in the doorway.

The frenzy grinds to an unnerving halt at the sound of her voice. All eyes are fixed upon them. The men in better shape attempt to stand and salute. A Human woman frantically hurries them into a smaller room, and the door is closed behind them. Outside, the chaos resumes.

Ap’lek takes the helmet from his weak grip, and lays him out on the table. The medical officer places a mask over his nose and mouth, and begins to cut his robe away. A deep gash runs along his ribs, bleeding profusely. A lightsaber wound. _How did he allow himself to get hit?_

“I need to clean this,” the medic says, tearing his robe away. “And his face.” She begins rummaging through the cabinets in the room. He’s beginning to stir again, revived by whatever it is he’s breathing. Ap’lek removes her helmet and places it beside his on the floor.

“Be still,” she commands softly, removing her gloves. She places her hand on his forehead, and for the first time in 12 years, they’re touching. Skin to skin; actually touching. Even in all of his fury and frustration, he cannot deny the small measure of peace it brings him, as he returns to consciousness.

The medic returns and begins cleaning the blood away from his wounds. Ap’lek steps back and slips her cloak from her shoulders. Dressed in her black bodysuit and split skirt, she returns to his side and brushes the bloody hair back from his face.

Abruptly, he sits up, tearing the mask from his face. His eyes are dark and piercing; she can sense his anger. The medic quickly withdraws, her eyes widening at his steadily-bleeding wounds.

“Get out,” he commands her, flinging his cloak away.

“Sir, you need—”

He raises one vice-like hand towards her, and she is silenced. Her eyes widen in fear, she claws desperately at her own throat. Choking.

“Get. Out.”

He casts her away, and she retreats from the room in a panic. As soon as the doors seal behind her, he begins to tear at his black robes. He cries out in pain, flinging them away. Without his shirt, Ap’lek can see that his shoulder is deeply gouged as well. Wincing, he lifts his arm and cranes his neck to examine the gash along his ribs.

“Don’t touch it,” she commands, coolly.

He casts her a dark, dangerous, glance, before throwing his head back and roaring in fury. He pounds his fist into his ribs, sending flecks of blood out in every direction. Whether it’s his rage infecting her, or her feelings for him, or that she has been ordered to protect him, her stoicism and composure have begun to give way.

She is upon him before he can think. She takes him by the wrist, holding fast. “Stop acting like a child,” she spits, wrapping her hand around the back of his neck and forcing him to meet her gaze. “You fulfilled your purpose on Starkiller Base.”

“I failed,” he seethes, his eyes piercing out from behind the dark curtains of his hair. “The girl—”

“The girl will draw Skywalker out of hiding more swiftly than we could have found him,” she asserts, tightening her grip on him, “To kill her, when the map is lost to us, would have been foolish.”

He roars again, and she can sense what he means to do a moment before he does it. Before he can reach for his lightsaber, she snatches it from his hip and casts it across the room. He thrashes in her grasp again, but she holds fast.

“Listen to me!” She takes his face in her hands, and he winces in pain as her fingers press into his wound. “You faced your test, and you succeeded. Han Solo is dead.”

His eyes crackle with fire, darting away.

“Now…” she withdraws, cautiously, “You will sit still, and allow me to treat your wounds.”

He shouts, “ _I don’t need_ —”

“I’m to bring you before Snoke,” she interrupts, “And for that, you must be strong.”

The unexpected shock of it seems to silence him. Momentarily. She begins rummaging through the cabinets and drawers to find the tools she needs. Sterile water, clean cloths, a flash sterilizer. There’s a field cauterizer, but she hopes it won’t be necessary to use it. She finds the suture kit she’d been looking for, and grabs a handful of Bacta bandages for good measure.

“Sit still,” she commands, spreading the supplies out on the table.

She starts with the wound on his ribs- it’s the most severe of the three. The cut is deep, and the contact of the blade must have been too brief to adequately cauterize it. Impressive work, for a novice. She wonders briefly at how his opponent had managed to land such a blow. But it’s nothing she can’t stitch and cover.

He presses his eyes shut, stifling his cries as she washes the blood away. The pain only serves to fuel his rage and frustration. He feels the red fog threatening to roll through his mind again, as it had during his fight with the girl from Jakku. But he strains to keep it under control. Ap’lek is right, as always. This needs to be done. But to suppress the emotion now will certainly have consequences later. He begins to plan out all the destruction he means to bring, all the chaos. He yearns to feel the hilt of his lightsaber in his hand right now.

Ap’lek studies the expression on his face, mindful of how much pain he’s in. For a number of reasons, it concerns her. “Do you want an anesthetic before I suture this?” she asks, running the flash sterilizer along the clean gash.

“No,” he chokes, bracing against the pain. “Just do it.”

She nods, placing her hands on his bare torso and leaning him into a better position. “Raise your arm, and sit still.”

He hisses at the first touch of the needle, but after a short time, the sensations seem to bleed together into a single, hot ache in the skin around the wound. His gaze is fixed on the far wall, his mind a blaze of thoughts and emotions. Blood drips into his eyes from the cut on his forehead, and he wipes it away angrily.

“Shh,” she quiets him, focused intently on stitching the wound, “It’s almost finished.”

He tries to still his mind, to focus on her voice and her touch, rather than his pain and anger. “How do you know how to do all of this?” he asks, a little more pointedly than he’d meant to.

“I burned my legs away to experience the suffering of Lord Vader,” she reminds him, snipping the end of the thread and moving to his shoulder, “Do you think I would be alive now, if I hadn’t learned to treat a wound?”

She begins to clean the blood away, and when he turns to look at her, her face is very close. Her eyes are downcast as she focuses on the gouge in his shoulder. He can see a few drops of his blood on her cheek, peppering her tattoo. With her this near to him, he can feel his anger beginning to twist into something different. He closes his eyes and inhales deeply, letting the scent of her fill his head. Rage, exertion, passion. Power. Her fingers on his bare skin seem to awaken something within him.

“How was it done?” he asks in a low voice, “Your legs?”

She answers without looking up, running the flash sterilizer along the wound. “I was lowered into the lava pits on Mustafar, and made to crawl back out on my own power.” She adds, “Like your grandfather.”

The image distracts him for a moment, from his own pain _. She has known far greater suffering than I have. What must she think of me, right now?_ “You chose this?” he asks, keeping his voice level as she begins to stitch the wound.

“I chose to serve the Dark Side,” she explains, “I chose to honor Lord Vader’s legacy, and continue his work. This was the trial that was selected for me by Leader Snoke, like the one you completed today. So yes, in a manner of speaking, I did choose it. I could have refused, just as you could have. But such a refusal has consequences.”

She ties the sutures off and sets the needle down, finally lifting her gaze to meet his. His pain all but forgotten, his breath hitches at the sight of her silver eyes rising to meet his.

“And your cybernetics?” he probes, suddenly struggling to govern his tone.

She combs her fingers through his hair, brushing it back from his bloody face, and he inhales sharply at her touch. His eyes fall closed, despite himself. Her touch fans the flame in his chest; it’s an emotion akin to anger, but more pleasurable. More immediately rewarding.

She examines the cut that runs from the middle of his forehead, across his nose, and down to his left edge of his jaw.

“The cybernetics were my reward,” she explains, beginning to wash the blood from his face with a wet cloth, “Some feel that such enhancements inhibit one’s sensitivity to the Force, but I believe otherwise. I am stronger now than I ever was before.”

He leans into her touch as she speaks, thrilled by the feeling of her hands on his face and neck, of her fingers running through his hair. He lets his eyes fall closed, trying to draw on some of her composure. _She must sense my feelings. How could she not?_ He finally allows himself to acknowledge the thought: _I want her._

“They were installed after I spent a few days in solitude, meditating on the suffering of Lord Vader,” she continues, running the sterilizer over the wound, “The skeletal structure has been enhanced with Cortosis. They have a synth-net neural interface, so I can move and feel them just as I could before. But their design is my own. A halfway point between Maul and Vader.” A faint smile forms on her lips, but quickly dissolves again. “I don’t know if I can suture this,” she announces softly, “The placement… I think I would do more damage than good, digging around for purchase.”

“Cauterize it,” he impulsively commands.

“Absolutely not,” she refutes, wiping the blood from her hands and moving away to look through the cabinets again. “It would be too painful, and the scarring would be terrible.”

He fingers the cut lightly, watching her. “I can take the pain,” he asserts, “It would be nothing compared to your suffering.”

 _Of course, that’s what this is about_ , she realizes, and a lick of frustration flares up in her chest. _It isn’t a contest_.

“That was very different,” she deflects, “I won’t do this to you. I just need to find a Bacta bulb, and that will do fine.”

He stands and strides across the room, stepping up behind her. When he leans over to reach into the cabinet, she feels his bare chest press into her back. He takes the field cauterizer from the shelf, and she tries to snatch it away, but her jerks it out of her reach.

She extends an open palm. “Enough of this, Kylo.”

“Do it,” he demands, his voice low and venomous, “Or I’ll find a mirror and do it myself.” He bears down on her imposingly, and she can sense the truth of his words.

“Fine,” she concedes, masking her anger well, “Only because I don’t want you to put your eye out.”

He reclines on the table again, and she leans over him, cauterizer in hand. Again, she combs his hair back, before looking into his eyes and whispering, “This will hurt a great deal.”

The procedure takes less than ten seconds, but for the both of them, it seems to last forever. His fingernails dig into the edges of the table as the smell of burning flesh fills the room. He groans through clenched teeth, pressing his eyes shut to avoid seeing the smoke rising from the sizzling wound. It brings Ap’lek no pleasure to hurt him this way. She can sense that he is not angry with her, but with himself. He feels he deserves to be punished for what he still believes to be a failure, but it’s entirely unnecessary. This kind of passion is what makes him so powerful, but it can also make him vulnerable. In her opinion, this is a moment of weakness, not strength.

When she finally withdraws, his eyes fly open, and he screams in agony. His back arches, his foot stamps on the metal table, and then he’s still again; his chest rising and falling as he pants.

“Take me away from here,” he demands weakly, fingering the tight, red scar on his face, “Get me out of this room.”

She helps him into a seated position. “Alright, _nuin’i_. Only a minute more.”

She places Bacta bandages over the sutures- a square on his shoulder, and a long strip wound around his ribs multiple times. She runs the bulb over the scar on his face, and watches as the redness begins to recede before her eyes.

“It doesn’t hurt so much now,” he observes, touching his face gingerly as he gets to his feet.

“You’re welcome.” She casts his shredded robe into the bin in the corner, and wraps his long, black cloak around his shoulders. He pulls it tightly around him, covering his bare torso, and with a pang, she suddenly has the urge to tear it away again. _I’d gotten used to that view._ She’d suppressed it in order to treat him, but now that he’s safe, her desire has returned. _Now is not the time_ , she tells herself, pushing the thought out of her mind. _We still have work to do_.

She dons her own cloak and helmet, scooping his up off the floor. He extends an upturned palm towards her.

She refuses with finality. “Not today. Your face needs to heal.”

As if in defiance, he bends with some difficulty and retrieves his lightsaber from the floor, tucking it back into his belt. She does not object.

“We need to meet with Hux,” he suddenly insists, as they stride through the halls.

“Not necessary. He knows we’re here, he knows where to take the ship, and he knows where to find us if necessary.” Distorted by the vocoder, her voice sounds more commanding than she’d intended.

His jaw tightens as if he means to argue, but he doesn’t. He can’t. He realizes that this is why the Supreme Leader sent her to him- she is here to help, to offer guidance and perspective. But sometimes, she has a way of making him feel like a child. He can’t tell if she means to or not, and that frustrates him. He wants her to see him as a man. As a Knight. Not as a young Padawan.

“You’ve done well, Kylo,” she reassures him again, “Never before has a Knight of Ren faced such a challenge as you, and you succeeded. You have proven your devotion to the Dark Side. Now, we need to rest, and gather our strength. Our work has just begun.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I mean... She's a tough goddamn _jendovsta minta _, you've gotta give her that. They gave 'er the Darth Vader treatment, and she took it in stride. (Pun intended)__


	8. Chapter 8

She accompanies him to his quarters, partly for his safety and partly for the safety of everyone else on the ship. Once they’re inside, she sets his helmet on the table and helps him slip the cloak from his shoulders, mindful of the bandages. Already, she can tell the Bacta is working. His movements are stronger, his expression not nearly as pained. It brings her peace, as he removes the lightsaber from his hip and places it beside his helmet. She’s grateful that he can’t see her eyes through her mask, that he can’t follow her gaze as she drinks in his shirtless form. Thick muscle wrapped around his tall, powerful frame. Broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist, the deep V on his abdomen drawing her gaze down towards his center.

Hux’s damning words ring in her ears.

She shakes it off. The events of the past few hours have frayed her nerves, and left her weakened. She needs to meditate, and sleep, before she does something regrettable.

“I’ll leave you now,” she announces, turning back for the door.

His reply is quick, and impulsive. “Don’t.” He reaches out and catches her by the wrist.

Her heart skips a beat as his fingers close around her arm, tugging her back. She takes a deep breath before turning to face him. “Kylo…”

He steps up very close, his eyes flitting across her mask. “Take that off.”

After a moment’s hesitation, she slips her thumbs under the jaw of her helmet, and lifts it away, setting it down beside his. Their eyes meet, black and silver. Her pulse is quickening, despite herself.

Trying to keep her voice level, she tiredly demands, “What?”

“I want you to stay.” He says it like a command.

Her swift negation is as much for her benefit as it is for his. “You need rest.”

He can’t control it. That feeling almost like anger, that feeling only she has ever inspired in him, suddenly flares up in his chest again. It radiates out from within him, sending hot bolts of panic through her mind.

He wraps his hand around the back of her neck and jerks her close to him. “Stop telling me what I need,” he snarls, “ _I_ know what I need.”

She’s not used to the scar on his face yet, and it makes him even more terribly beautiful than he had been before. This is not the boy she thought she’d loved all those years ago. He has been molded by the Darkness into a radiantly powerful man. He inspires awe and fear, with his strong, angular features, just inches from her face, and the smell of him, the distillation of all that he is, rising from his bare chest. All fury and exertion. Passion he has no idea what to do with.

Every instinct in her demands that she give in to this, that she let him claim her this way. Because maybe ( _not maybe_ ) this is what was meant to happen, all along. They’ve been hurtling towards one another for decades, now, speeding for this inevitable collision. But _NO_ , because the part of her mind that she’s worked so tirelessly to hone and train cries out for her to maintain control. As much as she may want him, he is very vulnerable now, driven by unregulated emotion and misplaced anger. To allow this discourse to continue would be unwise, perhaps even dangerous.

Above all, she knows that it would undermine the relationship she’s so carefully established between them. The deliberately laid boundary. This is, after all, why she went to Hux, in the first place. And she is still his superior, if only by a narrow margin. _Although, now that he’s killed Han Solo… Perhaps the scales have tipped in his favor._ The thought fills her with fear, and he can sense it.

He’s had enough of her hesitation. Heedless, driven by impulse, he takes her face in his hands. His eyes meet hers for a moment, before they wander, flitting here and there across her features. She is his, now. In his quarters, unmasked. He traces a possessive thumb along her cheekbone. “You know I could just _take_ whatever I want.”

His tone elicits a whisper of fear, but she keeps it well-guarded. His bravado enrages her. She hates that it makes her want him, that it makes her will crumble to dust in his hands.

“Not from me,” she sneers, pointlessly defiant, “Not from me.”

His brow knits together, gaze smoldering as he raises a hand to hover over her forehead. His eyes meet hers, unwavering, and she feels him beginning to bore his way into her. It’s as though he’s forcing a blunt blade into her mind, leaving it raw and ragged in his wake as he pushes deeper.

“Stop it, Kylo.” She tries to shove him away, but he catches her by the wrist and holds her hand to his bare chest. The deeper he dives, the harder it is to resist him. She’s paralyzed with fear and confusion. _When did he become so powerful? Or has he always been this strong, and simply toying with me? Leading me on? No, he doesn’t have the grace for that._

“I see what’s in your mind,” he whispers, confidently, “You’re full of desire, but you’re afraid.” He watches the anger burn in her eyes at this violation, and that makes him feel powerful. He reassures her in a whisper, “It’s okay. I feel it too.”

After a pause, he releases her, watching with a kind of detachment as she falls away from him. She gasps as he withdraws, gripping onto his intact shoulder to keep herself from collapsing. “Don’t…” she pants, furious, “Don’t _ever_ do that again, or I swear, I’ll—”

“Stop talking.”

He wraps a hand around her jaw, and the words catch in her throat. Their eyes meet, and for a fleeting moment, her fear intensifies. His flinty gaze, his brow knitted together in a blend of fury and fascination. His thumb slips across her chin, catching on her bottom lip. Tugging it down.

“Why did you let Hux take you to bed?” he demands.

Hurt and offense set her throat on fire. “I don’t let Force-null _Human men_ take me anywhere!”

“No?” He squeezes harder, hauls her closer. “What did you do with him, then?”

“I fucked him,” she spits, smiling so cruelly.

It feels like a hot pinprick at the base of his skull. “How?” he demands, shaking her roughly, “ _How_? What did he do to you?”

She’s quivering with rage. “Do you want me to give him a performance assessment? Submit it to High Command for review? Go fuck him yourself, if you want to know!”

“I’ll kill him,” he snarls, “Is that what you want?”

“You’ll do no such th—"

“ _I’ll kill him_. I’ve done it before.”

She flinches despite herself. Like he’s hit her in the face. The memory is one that divides her even now, and it is not one that she would choose to dwell on. They’d been children, then, all of them. Crammed together so awkwardly into that academy on Yavin 4, beneath the earnest but blind eye of Luke Skywalker. The Jedi Master saw what he chose to see. Which is why he didn’t see Ap’lek sneak out with the Zabrak boy that night, letting him drag her by the hand and into the darkened forest, towards the ruins of the old temple. He didn’t see the things they did to one another, didn’t hear her gasps and moans, or how they laughed when he called her Ventress and she called him Savage, because it was so funny, but then again, it really wasn’t funny at all. And he didn’t see the look on Ben’s face the following morning, when he could sense that something in his friend had been irreversibly changed and he’d had absolutely nothing to do with it.

She’d been 16, then. Ben even younger.

But a year later, Master Skywalker saw that Zabrak boy’s body lying amidst the smoldering ruin of his Academy, rent apart the blade of Kylo Ren.

Kylo Ren, whose grip on her jaw is beginning to soften, whose fingertips are tracing along their edges of her lips as he draws nearer and nearer.

“You had no right to do that,” she whispers, “I don’t belong to you. I didn’t then, and I don’t now.”

“Why Hux?” he presses, “Why him, and not me?”

The admission is careless, and entirely impulsive. It slips through the cracks of her discipline before she can stop it. “I care too much about you.”

A burst of absolving desire suddenly explodes from within Kylo. Before she can think, before she can _breathe_ , he’s pulling at her, and the space between them shrinks until they collide into a fierce kiss.

All the dissonance in the universe abates. All the useless, distracting noise fades away. And, for a moment, everything is silent.

It's then that Ap’lek realizes it is entirely possible that Kylo has never done this in his life. His lips are wet, slightly parted, and his tongue moves like he's fishing, rough pad of it scraping along her teeth and over her palate. Inexpert. Inelegant.

“Stop that.” She takes him by the jaw, annoyed. “You’re like a child.” She opens her mouth against his and pauses for a moment. He tries to pursue, but she doesn’t let him. Instead, she gently slips her tongue past his lips, meeting his in the space between them.

She feels his knees weaken. Feels the broken, ragged moan vibrate up from his throat and pass into hers.

Ap’lek gives in. She wraps her arms around his neck and presses her chest to his, clinging. Begging. He grunts when she brushes past his shoulder, but he only kisses her harder for it. She can feel his heart pounding against her, like a furious war drum. She withdraws long enough to gasp but he pursues her, and forces his tongue into her mouth once more. She moans with the thrill. Her fingers comb back through his hair, taking handfuls of the dark waves and tugging feverishly. He tears one of her hands away, bringing it down over the tight bulge taking shape beneath his black pants. For a moment, she panics, because all she can think is _big, big,_ _big_. He forces her to squeeze, shuddering into their kiss as she massages her hand over him.

He’s filling her head, as she’d done to Hux. Invading her, becoming a part of her. But there’s a very dangerous, unbridled quality to it. His bleeding into her seems an accidental thing, a symptom of his lack of control. And then the eclipse shifts, and she is swallowed in the aphelion darkness of him. It’s an undertow she’s fought against for decades, swimming and clawing to keep free of it. It’s dangerous. It could jeopardize everything.

“Control is for spineless Jedi,” he whispers against her lips.

She swallows it like so much water. She would drown in him, if she could.

_He waited all these years for me._

“Get rid of this,” he commands darkly, flinging the cloak from her shoulders. Their hands meet as they simultaneously move to tug the wide belt from her waist, and the fabric of her long robe tears in his hands as he jerks it up over her head. He’s alight with a blend of anger and desire, frustration and need. He snarls hungrily at the sight of her bare chest, taking her in his arms again and impulsively bending to suck on one of her pale breasts. It stirs some sort of deep, primal, instinctive pleasure in him. Stripped bare, she’s so small. All bone and lean muscle, he feels like he could break her in his arms, snap her in two. And that makes him feel powerful.

He doesn’t know what to do, how to touch her. But something inside of him cries out to allow pleasure to instruct his flesh.

_Devour her._

His hands roam possessively up the smooth, pale skin on her back, and she gasps, pulling him closer by the back of the neck. _This is right_ , he triumphantly acknowledges. _This is the will of the Shadow_. He reaches up and frees her hair from its austere bun. It cascades over their shoulders in a blue-black curtain.

She gasps and clings to him as he suddenly lifts her off the ground to set her on the table beside them. Her legs wrap down around his, and before they can think, they’re tearing into each other’s remaining clothing. He shoves her onto her back and hooks his fingers into the waist of her tight, black pants before flinging them away. Her hands fret with the clasp on his waist, the buckle of his belt.

And suddenly, she can see him. All of him, naked and pale in the low light. Like every other part of him, his cock is alarmingly, awkwardly large. Unwieldy. He wraps a hand around her cybernetic leg and jerks it aside, spreading her apart. She props herself up on her elbows and watches as his gaze come to rest, to linger, but not where she expected. He’s focused on the crisp line between black and white, the place where synthflesh meets skin. And though he feigns indifference as he studies her form, as he traces his fingers along her thigh, she can hear the words as they occur to him.

_Bone. Flesh. Searing. Agony. Scream._

He is awestruck by her. Enamored in a way he has never known before. And as long as that remains true, she still has power over him.

The pause lasts the length of a heartbeat before his eyes flit back up to meet hers. For a moment, he seems almost humiliated. And then his aggressive conquest resumes. He takes her by the jaw and dives into her again. They move urgently, driven by passion and raw, animal need. His fingers wrap in her hair, and he watches as she reaches down between them. When her fingers close around his member, they shudder against a wave of shared pleasure.

_In_.

Desperately, insistently, she guides him towards her. He finds his footing, his hands scrambling along her body, gripping the edge of the table. _Fuck, fuck, fuck_. Finally, his hand brushes against hers, steadying himself as he slips against the slick warmth of her. He has never needed anything so badly, never felt an urge like this. With a kind of gentle, fumbling brutality, he pushes into her until he’s buried to the hilt.

Their union is realized. After all these years of waiting, they are finally one.

He trembles in her arms, hands tightening like vises around her waist. It’s so tight, inside of her, so soft and warm. Eyes pressed shut, he begins to draw his cock back out again. Sweat beads on his forehead, and he has to choke back the threat of climax as her opening strains against his aching head, tighter even than he holds himself when he’s alone at night.

_No, no, NO, I’m not going to let this end now,_ he tells himself, letting the wave recede. _I’m not done with her yet_.

His first thrust is a terribly uncertain thing, but he feels the spike of pleasure radiate out from her all the same. Biting his lip, he thrusts again, and again: quickening, fiercer and deeper. His orgasm still hovers above him like a threat, dizzyingly close; close enough to catch, to swallow him like a star so it might burn him inside as well as out. _If I come right now, I’ll come_ inside _her, inside Ap’lek, and—_ No _, don’t think that!_

He has to pause, breathing deep, eyes stinging with the drip of fresh sweat. All the anger and fury and frustration he’d felt has been wrought into this dangerous, all-consuming lust.

“Please,” she begs, hooking her heel around the back of his thigh and tugging him close.

With a shuddering moan, he begins again. Stronger, more confident. He pays no heed to the pain from his wounds. This is more important. This is a _culmination_. He needs this, as he’s never felt need before. He craves the feel of this small, fragile person lying beneath him, the feel of her body wrapping him in warmth. His head swims with the sound of her cries, the desperation in her voice as he claims her.

_Mine. Mine. Mine._

He drags her further towards the edge of the table, spreading his legs between hers. And gradually, he finds a rhythm- deep, aggressive, and passionate. He can hear her, now, guiding him. Telling him what to do, whether she means to or not. The sensation travels up through his stomach in searing waves, all the way through to his fingertips. His body is tight with exertion, sweat-slick. And each thrust wrings little gasps and huffs of breath from her throat. He knows he’s doing well. He’s always been a quick study.

The table scrapes against the floor as he takes her. He’s not going to last. He can feel his orgasm approaching rapidly, it's there in the little tremors shooting up his thighs, the tingling at the base of his spine. It's so good. _She_ feels so good, like he always knew that she would. He’s drunk on the scent of her skin, the way her body moves and trembles beneath his bulk.

He grips her by the hips and yanks her hard into the next thrust, ramming her with his full length.

_Graceless_ , he’s always thought. _An inelegant weapon, not like her_.

The shocked, pained sound that tears from her throat sends a perverse bolt of pleasure through his chest.

_But she wants me_ , he realizes.

“I do,” she whimpers, hands slipping so wantonly above her head, “I do.”

He lunges forward to make a fist in her hair, and with a sharp tug, he forces her to look at his face.

“Tell me,” he pants against her lips, “Tell me how powerful I am. I want to hear you say it.”

Her eyes change in a way he’s never seen before; her lips parting, breaths so shallow and halting. Her hands rise to his cheeks, combing his hair away. Her eyes all fire and fury, she meets his gaze fearlessly, and breathes, “You… are the most powerful Knight… yet born.”

He groans aloud to hear her say it. There’s a strange, new quality to her voice, somewhere between pride, venom, and possessiveness.

“You… Will _never_ be defeated.”

“I’m a warrior,” he asserts, hauling her up into a seated position on the very edge of the table. His face is just inches from hers, as he continues to drive into her. Her breasts brush against his chest as she surges in time with him. He watches her lips move as she speaks.

“You… are the most fearsome warrior in the Galaxy,” she pants, believing every word of it.

“Yes…” His head falls back, and the word fades to a low, satisfied hiss. His fingers dig into her hips, and she clings to him as he begins to pound into her with more force.

She cries out each time he penetrates her, overwhelmed by how completely he fills her. How stretched she feels, with him inside of her. Whether he means to or not, he’s keeping her balanced on that delicious line between pain and pleasure: almost hurting her, but not quite. She is in awe of this man. The sweet, awkward boy she’d cared for all those years ago has become her fierce and terrifying lover.

“You’re _mine_ ,” he pants, “You’ve always been mine.”

The wheel of fire inside of him draws nearer and nearer. She feels the hate in his heart, the rage that guides him. She feels the conflict in him, the warring sides of Light and Dark, threatening to rend her in two along with him. His mind is a blast furnace of such intense emotions that Ap’lek wonders, for a moment, if either of them will survive it. He could hurt her, now, if he wanted. He could kill her. It’s a thought that reverberates through their minds in tandem. And she has no way of knowing whether or not he will.

“ _Pur’vyshtal’i_ ,” she supplicates, “My… My beautiful warrior!

His eyes roll back in his head as his climax washes over him, like a flash of lighting licking up his body, spurting from his very core. Then with a final, nearly violent thrust, he’s coming, emptying his cock _inside someone_ for the first time in his life. That, by some beautiful trick of the Force, it’s the person he holds most dear in the entire Galaxy is overwhelming for him. She is perhaps the only person he has ever really, truly cared about, all his life, and he’s inside her, pouring himself into her, and she’s taking it. She’s taking it all, so well, _so well_. He grabs her hips and grinds into her, holding her firmly in place as his cock keeps spasming, pulsing out jet after mind-numbing jet, pumping her full with his seed.

“Kylo,” she whimpers, and he can feel her clenching around him, her back muscles tight and snapping, even as she tries to squirm away from the overstimulation. He doesn’t let her.

It takes him a moment to realize that the loud, animalistic groans filling the room are coming from him. He thrusts again, seized by an inexplicable urge to drive his load deeper and deeper. Only then does he realize: he is completely spent. He is hunched over Ap’lek, _his Ap’lek_ , leaning heavily on her as she balances on the edge of the table. And she’s panting against him, face pressed into his sweat-damp neck, clinging to him to try and keep them upright. She’s murmuring something, a whimpering, unintelligible string of words that sound like his name.

Leaving the warm clutch of her body is almost physically painful. His cock feels oversensitive, but it still bobs up as he pulls out. Somehow, he’s still hard. Painfully, defiantly hard.

Ap’lek looks ruined. Her curtain of black hair cascades over her shoulders in unkempt waves, silver-white eyes hazy with lingering need. Those intoxicatingly full lips have been rendered a luscious, bitten pink by his brutal kisses. A furtive, indulgent glance confirms his fantasy: her legs are spread wide, and his come is dripping out of her onto the floor. His cock jumps at the sight, and he quickly looks away. Her hard muscle is glistening with sweat, chest rising and falling with panting breaths, and Kylo thinks that he must be dreaming, because the Ap’lek he knows would sooner _kill_ someone than let them witness her like this.

It makes his throat burn, and his chest tighten. “Again,” he commands, still breathless.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” she pants, shaking her head in dismissal.

“ _Again_.”

“Kylo, just let me think—"

And then he’s suddenly slipping his arms around her, lifting her effortlessly, and she finds herself too shocked to protest.

“Think on the bed,” he announces, before crossing the room and dropping her unceremoniously onto his mattress.


	9. Chapter 9

“Do you remember when we were young?” he asks, his voice low and even.

He’s sitting on the bed, leaned back against the wall. His lover is wrapped in his arms, with her head resting in the corner between his neck and shoulder. Their clothes still lie on the floor near the table, discarded along with all their discipline and morality. A light sheen of sweat still clings to their bodies, in the aftermath of their collision. In the back of his mind, he’s aware that his wounds are aching. But he pays them no heed. His mind is alight with a frenzy of conflicting thoughts; his body feels raw and alive.

Eyes fixed on a far point on the wall, he asks, “Do you remember how we were?”

“Yes,” she whispers, turning to nuzzle up into his neck, “I remember.”

“You always made me so angry,” he admits, stoically, “Always one step ahead of me, always stronger and faster.”

“I’m older. And Dathomirian.” _And a woman._

“No,” he muses, “No, I loved you for it. I realize that, now. And I’ve loved you every day since.”

She doesn’t respond, but it’s not lost on him the way she seems to tense in his grasp.

It’s not tenderness he’s showing, not quite. Vulnerability is closer. His anger has abated- poured into her in their release. And now he’s stripped bare, as he has never been before. She can sense the seed of attachment has been planted deep within him, and that both frightens and thrills her.

That she feels it, too, send a bolt of terror through her chest.

_I don’t do attachment. Passion, but no chains._

She wants a cigarette.

He heaves a deep sigh, looking down at her and letting his finger trace along the tattoo on her face. His expression is pensive, piercing eyes moving across her features as though to drink her in.

“I need you,” he whispers.

She settles deeper into his arms, looking away. “I’m here.”

“That’s not what I mean. I mean that I can’t do this alone. I won’t. I want you by my side.”

“I am, Kylo.”

“ _Listen to me_.”

The sudden harshness of his tone startles her. She looks up, brow furrowed.

“Together, we have no need for Snoke. Or Hux. If we wanted to, we could make our own victory without them.”

It is not what she expected to hear. “You don’t mean this,” she dismisses, “Your judgement has been clouded by—”

“By what?’ he interrupts, “By love?”

The word is like a slap in the face. He just had to spoil it, didn’t he? She sucks her teeth, moves to stand.

“No,” Kylo snaps, yanking her back into his arms again. “You’re mine.”

“ _I am no such thing_.”

“No.” He buries his face in her neck. “You say you’re not, but you always have been. I want to be with you like this forever. I love you.”

“Don’t say that again,” she snarls, trying to twist around to look at him.

“I love you,” Kylo repeats confidently.

“ _You don’t_.”

He recoils, wounded, and she uses the opportunity to slip out of his arms.

“This was a mistake. You say these things because you’ve never felt this way before, and you’re too young and naïve and _Human_ to know how to label it. It’s just sex. Give yourself half an hour and you’ll be back to normal.” She stands, cracks her neck. “I’m leaving.”

“No!” Kylo springs forward, catching her by the wrist. “No. Don’t go.”

“Kylo, for the last time…”

"Give me your word.”

“What?” she sighs impatiently.

“No one else can have you.”

Ap’lek rolls her eyes.

“I mean it.” He tightens his grip on her arm. “I’ll go mad if you don’t promise me. No one else.”

“You’re hurting me,” she announces flatly.

Kylo knows her well enough to hear the threat behind her words, and so he releases her, ashamed to see how red her skin had become in his grip. “I’m sorry. I… I feel like I’ll die if someone else touches you. Please. Especially Hux,” he impulsively blurts, “I’ll do whatever you want, just… Not him, ever again.”

She snarls in frustration. “If you think I would ever _lower myself_ to fuck a single one of the mindless, groveling worms that inhabit this ship, or for that matter, go crawling back to the likes of _Armitage Hux_ —”

“So, I’m the only one, then. No one else gets you. You’re mine. And I’m yours.”

“Stop saying that,” Ap’lek snaps, as though defending herself against accusation. She’s beginning to get truly angry, and that can only be good. It’s certainly more comfortable than the sudden wave of unnamed emotion that had been building up, when they’d been fucking.

“You’re mine,” Kylo repeats, “And I’m yours. I’ve always been yours.”

“I told you to stop!” She winds up to strike him, but he catches her by the wrist yet again.

“No,” he impresses, “I mean that. I’ve loved you every day, since the day we met, and I _know_ you feel the same way.”

“No, you—”

“You deny it because you’re afraid,” he interrupts, rising to his feet to tower over her, “I’m not stupid, I know that’s why it took you so long to come to me this way. I can see it in you, even now. But together, we would have nothing to fear ever again. Join me, and together we will rule the Galaxy as one.”

She exhales sharply as his fingertips make contact with her temples, and she finds herself laid out by a reel of images. The death of General Hux, and the death of Supreme Leader Snoke. Resistance fleets set alight by her flames, falling from the sky like so many meteorites. And then, not one throne but two, upon which they sit side by side: the infallible Emperor and Empress, overcome by dark beauty, and terrible power.

 _We were born for it_ , he tells her, his voice echoing so darkly through her skull, _it is our destiny, if we choose it to be_.

She gasps when he withdraws, clutching at his shoulder for balance.

“In the history of the Sith,” he reminds her, “There are always two.”

Her mind spasms once more in his hold. _Does he know? Surely not, my deception is too complete. Should I tell him, then, if this is what he wants? No,_ she decides, _keep it close, for now. The time is not right._

“You want to revive the old ways,” she voices aloud, trying to shove him away by the chest, “You would seduce me with these promises of shared power, while you subjugate me into becoming your Apprentice!”

“No,” he swiftly negates, holding her hand still against his chest, “Not revive the old ways, but _perfect_ them. We’ll make them our own.”

She looks up at him, then, silver eyes meeting the deep black of his own. No matter how deeply she delves, she can sense no deception in him. Emotionality, yes. Attachment. But true passion. Drive. Ambition that is, for once, entirely his own. She reaches up and cautiously places a hand on his cheek, returning his gaze with focused intensity.

“It’s time to let the past die,” he says, “I’ll kill it myself, if I have to.”

Despite her best efforts, his words are intoxicating. The promise of such unlimited power is seductive beyond any of the physical things they just did to one another.

Perhaps it’s not as binary as Sidious would have her believe. Perhaps it’s not Kylo _or_ her. It could be both.

Her mind is reeling, trying to make some sense of it. They could kill their masters. Become their own masters.

He’s right. They could do it.

Kylo can sense the subtle change in her, and like that, the battle is lost. With a triumphant snarl, he gathers her bodily into his arms and hauls her back to the bed. In a kind of fevered, unconscious haze, she settles into his lap.

“Equals,” she exhales, running her hands up his chest and over his shoulders. “Give me your word.”

“You have it.” He closes his eyes, drags his lips along her throat to tilt her head back. “You have all of me. Everything I can give.”

“We… We could do it,” she breathes, “We could… We could rule.”

“We _will_.”

“We will,” she corrects, and with it, she finally gives in. “Yes, yes, we will.”

“They will bow to us, or they will be destroyed,” he snarls triumphantly, his heart beginning to pound faster in his chest. He’s hardening again, his hands tightening around her hips to press her down onto his lap. “No one will be able to resist the combined strength of Kylo and Ap’lek Ren. Worlds will tremble in fear at the sound of our names.”

“We could be… Be limitless,” she pants.

“Infinite.” He fumbles between them for his cock.

She reaches down, guides him.

When he drives up into her, Kylo makes a sound like a triumphant war cry.

“I love you,” he gasps, gazing up at her with so much devotion, so much reverence.

The words stick in her throat.

“I love you,” he presses, and there is an edge of danger to be heard in his voice. “ _Say it_.”

“Kylo—”

“ _Say it_. It’s true, I can feel it.”

She closes her eyes. “I love you, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is it a shock to anyone that Kylo is an annoying, demanding little virgin sub? Fuck.


	10. Chapter 10

The following morning, Kylo awakens to find himself alone in his bed. For a moment, he’s gripped with panic, wondering if the events of the previous night had been no more than fantasy. And then he hears her voice.

“Be still, _pur’nuin’i_ ,” she gently calls from the sitting room, “I have not left you.”

He rises as if in a dream, slipping into the long, black skirt of his robe before stepping from the room. She’s bathed and dressed, somehow managing not to wake him, and now she’s seated at his table with a small mirror. With gentle, well-practiced fingers, she traces the edges of her eyes with black and red.

It’s strange for him to process, seeing her in his quarters, doing this seemingly normal but very private thing. He doesn’t know what to do, like he’s forgotten who she is. Or maybe he’s forgotten who _he_ is. Maybe it doesn’t matter, because they’re both different now.

“Sit with me,” she coaxes, pulling his chair over with a casual wave of her hand as she continues her routine.

He takes his place beside her, never taking his eyes off her face.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” she gently instructs, “Give way to impulse.”

Cautiously, he reaches out and runs his fingers along her hair. It hangs freely down her back, combed sleek and straight.

“I’d like to kiss you,” he murmurs, heat rising to his face.

She turns to face him. “So, kiss me.”

He leans in cautiously, eyes flitting down to her lips. It’s a quick, chaste thing, just pressing his mouth to hers for a moment before he withdraws. She smiles, wraps a hand around the back of his neck, and pulls him back in. His heart sings.

When they part, he hesitantly whispers, “ _Daynas, oenshar’i_.”

She smiles, tracing her nose along his cheek. “Where did you learn that?”

He closes his eyes, leaning into the warmth of her touch. “I think I heard your heart say it, once.”

“ _Pur’ay’vyshtal_ ,” she breathes, brushing her nose against his, “I hear your heart, too.”

He looks to the table, to her array of colored paints. “Why do you do this?” he asks, “No one will see.”

“Do you not find it beautiful?”

“I do,” he’s quick to justify.

She smiles. “That’s why.”

“Such a sybarite,” he admonishes, though she can hear the playfulness in his voice.

“Yes,” she proudly agrees, “And I’ll make one of you, before the end.”

The strangest thought occurs to her, then. Caught up in the sharp, angular lines of his face, the gentle curves of his lips, she finds herself doing what she so often asks of him, and giving way to impulse.

She picks up her stick of soft, black coal, lifting it towards his face. He jerks away, looking at her in confusion.

“Be still,” she commands softly, taking him by the chin, “Trust me.”

He stiffly leans back in, hesitantly relinquishing control. He does trust her. He always has.

“What is this?” he asks as she begins to fill in his upper lip with black.

“You were born of Queens,” Ap’lek whispers, tracing along the soft, sweeping line of his lip, “I would see you this way, just once.”

With a slow, precise line, she draws the Scar of Remembrance down the middle of his lower lip.

“This is for women,” he argues, trying once more to pull away.

She holds fast. “You say it as though to be a woman is to be weak.”

“No.” He looks away, chagrined. “Of course not.”

“Beauty does not limit itself with such meaningless divisions,” she lectures, careful of his wound as she dots his cheeks below his eyes. “Nor should we.”

Leaning back to admire her work, she cannot help but smile.

“Come,” she coaxes, rising to her feet, “Indulge me.”

He takes her hand and allows her to lead him back into his bedchamber, where she stands him before his full-length mirror. Ap’lek has never been so enamored with him as she is now. Skirted and bare-chested, thick with muscle. Scarred, and regally painted; he is beautiful. She stands behind him, slipping her arms beneath his to cling to his chest.

“My dark prince,” she whispers in his ear, “Born to rule.”

Kylo is taken aback at the sight of himself. His brow furrows, and he lifts a cautious hand to his lips.

“Your grandmother sat upon a throne, and so too will you.”

“Vader killed her,” he says strangely, as though it somehow negates the validity of what she’d said.

“No,” she reveals, uncharacteristically transparent, “Your mother killed her.”

“What?”

“Amidala was the sacrifice demanded from Vader, this is true,” she explains, combing her fingers through his hair, “But he did not kill her. She died as your mother was born.”

Kylo’s expression hardens. “How do you know this?”

“I’ve seen it,” she murmurs, “In time, you’ll be shown, too.”

“Show me now.”

“No.”

Hearing it frustrates him. He understands that there are still secrets between them, of course he does. He is not so naïve as to think that he has surpassed her. But a red bolt of envy runs through his chest, nonetheless.

“Kylo,” she heeds, tightening her arms around him.

He exhales hotly through his nose, doing his best to still himself. For her, and only her, does he do this. “I know.”

“You will soon want for nothing,” she reassures him, “And when that day comes, if it is in my power to give, I swear that you shall have it.”

He looks into the mirror, eyes flitting across the reflection of his face.

“I see you draped in black and red,” she whispers, closing her eyes and letting the image fill her head. “Your hair veined with gold. Crowned, and taking your place upon a throne of obsidian.”

He takes her hand in his, squeezing tightly. “With you by my side.”

“Yes,” she nods, “With me by your side.”

He cranes his neck down and presses a kiss to her mouth. Long and lingering, but still. Calm.

Ap’lek sighs deeply when he withdraws. “I have to leave you, now, _pur’ay’vyshtal_ ,” she softly reveals.

His heart sinks, and he turns to face her. “What?”

“Only for a short while,” she reassures, reaching up to comb his hair back from his face.

His arms tighten possessively around her. “Where?”

“I must return to the Unknown Regions to accept counsel,” she explains, “Much has changed, in the past day, and I expect much more will change by the time I return. Things have been set into motion that cannot now be undone, and we must be ready.”

“Take me with you,” he begs, as she steps away to gather her things.

“Someday, my love. I promise.”

“No,” he insists, making no attempt to hide his desperation, “ _Today_.”

She casts him a stern look. “We need you here. Now, more than ever, we cannot allow the First Order to operate unattended.”

With a sinking, defeated feeling, he realizes that she’s right. He looks back to the mirror, raising a hand to wipe the black from his lips.

“No,” she commands, catching him by the wrist, and he looks to her in surprise. “Leave it. For me.”

Difficult though it may be, he finds that he cannot bring himself to deny her the pleasure.

* * *

When Kylo Ren steps up beside the General, on the command bridge of the _Finalizer_ , Hux notices that, for the first time in weeks, the Knight is alone.

“General,” Kylo begins, his voice distorted by his mask, “Report.”

Hux glances around, ignoring the command entirely. “Off the leash today, are we?” he sneers.

“Ap’lek Ren is away,” he replies curtly, “Attending to higher agendas than yours.”

A sinking feeling begins to take shape in the pit of the General’s stomach. All morning, he’d been unable to shake the suspicion that something has transpired between the two Knights of Ren. He’d checked flight logs and security cameras, and he’d watched the footage of Ap’lek hauling her insensate companion to the medbay. After that, he’d had other matters to address, and he had lost track of them.

Not that it’s any of his business what the Knights of Ren do to each other.

And now, there is something different about Kylo; subtle, but distinct. Like he’d emerged from his quarters draped in an extra layer of darkness, this morning. And at the mention of Ap’lek, his fury had spiked dangerously.

Not that it matters.

Hux straightens his uniform, turning back to his control panel. “Please inform Ap’lek Ren that, in the future, any and all departures from this ship must be approved by me. _Personally_. We’ll have no more of these unsanctioned, unscheduled comings and goings from the likes of her, weakening our position.”

An appropriate display of authority, he thinks. _Not_ a petty attempt to cling to some dignity, even in defeat.

Because this isn’t a defeat. It wasn’t a fight, in the first place.

“Tell her yourself,” Kylo replies, and there’s an undeniable air of gloating in his voice. He waits for a moment before he twists the knife: “Though I doubt she has any interest in speaking with you, anymore.”

An adolescent boy who got his first taste of what the grown-ups do at night. What a _delightful_ new facet to Lord Ren’s personality _._

Ever defiant, ever proud, the General rolls his eyes. Even as the hot stone of jealousy rises in the back of his throat.


	11. Chapter 11

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Ap’lek remarks, as Kylo steps into the conference room with her.

She’s standing by the massive viewport, hands clasped behind her back. Outside, the Resistance fleet limps along in disrepair. The occasional ship stutters to a halt and falls dark, only to be blasted into oblivion by the _Supremacy’s_ cannons.

She surveys the chaos through the eye slits of her mask, relishing in it. She can _taste_ their fear. Their frantic uncertainty. It feels like Hosnia, but drawn out. Building steadily, rather than coming on all at once. Teasing. And, rising above the cacophony, she can taste the silent suffering of General Organa. It travels through the Force on deafening, red-hot ripples, and it is the most delicious thing of all. Ap’lek Ren devours it in earnest.

But Kylo is a sour note in her perfect symphony. She can sense that he is disturbed; his thoughts dwell on his mother, too, hanging as she is in tenuous stasis aboard the _Raddus_. She feels his obsession drilling away at the base of her skull, like a hot needle. _Will she live? Will she die?_ _What have I done?_

It’s such a frustration. He could’ve killed her, if it had really been what he’d wanted.

“You need to let her go,” Ap’lek commands softly.

After a long beat, he murmurs, “I know.”

“No, you don’t. You talk of killing your past, but you must also let it die.”

The faintest snarl can be heard from her lover, followed by the distinctive click and hiss of his mask. The _clank_ as he slams it onto the conference table. “Tell me _how_ ,” he demands. That whiny, childish tone.

“I can’t hold your hand through everything,” she snaps, annoyed.

She can feel him vibrating with frustration, his will battling against her own. Lips curled, nostrils flared. He’s been tugging at the seams of their relationship for days, now.

Kylo snarls again, pawing roughly at her mask. Ap’lek stands her ground, gaze still fixed on the fleet, and allows him to remove it. He slams it onto the table, alongside his.

“Are you quite finished?” she asks pointedly.

“Don’t talk to me like that,” he commands, taking her by the arm and wrenching her around to face him. “I’m not a child.”

Petulant words. Spoken, she thinks, less to her and more to the ghost of his mother that he can’t seem to shake. Because when she is near, the whole fabric of reality seems to sour, just slightly.

General Organa had never, ever liked her. Not since the day her son dragged her by the hand through the Jedi camp, so he could introduce her to his new best friend. The blood of Skywalker could sense the Darkness in her, even then.

 _Bad influence_. That’s what she was. _Distraction_. _Don’t waste your time with that girl._

Yes, Leia had been right to fear her. And now she thinks she can take her _pur’vyshtal’nek_ away. She thinks she can save Kylo Ren.

No, Ap’lek realizes, it is perhaps even worse than that. She thinks that he’s still the boy he used to be. Still the son of Rebel Scum. But he’s not.

“Ap’lek!” he insists, shaking her roughly.

At once, her attention snaps back to him. She snarls, yielding at once to the sudden burst of anger in her chest. Without warning, she takes a handful of hair on the back of his head. With a quick jerk of her arm, she forces his head back, exposing the long, pale expanse of his throat.

“Stop thinking of her,” she commands. _Her_ , his mother. _Her_ , the scavenger. “You’re here. With _me_. This is what _you_ wanted.”

He struggles, trying to shove her away. “Get off.”

“No.” She wraps her free hand around his throat and gives a threatening squeeze, and Kylo falls still. “You beg and beg and beg, and when I finally give in, this is the way you behave? Like a spoiled little child, throwing an angry little fit, because he doesn’t know what he wants, after all?”

“ _No_.”

She sneers. The Republic ruined this boy. General Organa, and his filthy, Corellian father. The Jedi. Even Snoke, puppet that he is. They let him become this way: a wild, conflicted thing, bucking against the authority to which he so desperately clings. She could kill them for it.

“Please,” he whispers, and his voice is soft, young, distant. Raw. Like him. Raw and bleeding. He wants to cry, because... Because he _needs_ her. He needs her not to be angry, or to be angrier. To leave him alone, to just _tell him what to do_ already.

Because this is dangerous. _Dangerous_. To be so known. To be so open. To be so… _Exposed_. Sliced in two, ripped apart like a cadaver for dissection. His heart beating, out in the open, pounding faster and faster.

It is then that Ap’lek realizes: he’s _allowing_ this. It’s pouring from him in unregulated waves. He _craves_ it. Like water. Like air.

“You need this, don’t you?” she murmurs, self-satisfied.

His sullen silence is all the answer she needs.

“You want to be told what to do,” she goads, “Because you’ve never felt safe unless you’re following orders.”

Kylo rankles, trying to resist, but she knows him better than that. She can smell the confused arousal, mixed with fear, loathing, love, and obsession. He is contradiction incarnate: talking so loudly, acting so _big,_ but what he really wants is to be taken in hand.

Her hand, and no one else’s.

“Tell me what you need, Kylo.” Eerily calm, the eye in the center of his storm.

What does he need? He needs the past thirty years to be entirely undone. He needs not to be the child of his parents. He needs the whole war to be over, or never to have happened in the first place. He needs somewhere to feel… _Safe_. He needs… He needs…

He needs to have been born someone else. Someone Force-null, and unburdened by legacy. Someone unknown, unmemorable, insignificant. He needs to be unmade.

He needs to not be Kylo Ren, anymore. And, at the same time, _not_ Ben Solo.

“I don’t know.” He does.

“Lie to me again, see what happens.” She tilts his face down towards her, but he doesn’t look into her eyes. His breath is hot on her lips, coming in quick, angry bursts. “Remember this,” she says, in a voice entirely devoid of emotion. “You are the one who came to me with plots and schemes. This was _your_ design.”

Panic flares in his chest. She’s right, of course, she’s right. His design, and now he feels so adrift. Lost, in the blackness of the void, of the vacuum, of _you don’t know what you’re doing_. Thrust into free-fall, blown from an airlock, millennia from the nearest source of light. ( _NOT LIGHT, NOT LIGHT_ ) Lost, lost, lost. And it’s his fault, his fault, _his fault._

“When will you understand that I am with you? I am the only one who has ever _truly_ been with you, all of your life.”

“You’re _lying_!” he snaps, a defensive pivot. Still whining. Still childish.

“I’m not.”

“You’re lying, like all of them! You would use me for your own agendas!”

“What _agendas_? All my life, you’ve been the only—”

“Just like _them_!” Just like his mother and uncle. They’d wanted a good little Jedi, well-behaved and devoid of feeling. Just like the Supreme Leader, who wants a different kind of soldier, one with the ability to feel everything. Feel it, and bear it all. But unthinking. Obedient. Chained.

 _Ap’lek showed you that, she’s the one who finally let you see how they were manipulating—_ No!

They all wanted him for a reason, because he had a _use_ , and when he wasn’t enough, when he failed, when—

Kylo screams in unbridled anguish. It hurts, and he can’t make it stop hurting. He fights, bucking in an effort to shed her, eyes wild and body flooding with panic. “Liar! Liar! LIAR.”

Ap’lek releases her hold on his throat, instead taking his face in her hands, standing pressed against, taking the terrified thrashing. “I’m not. Have I ever lied to you?”

“How would I know?”

“You know,” she murmurs, taking him by the wrist and laying his palm against her forehead. “You know _me_.”

He doesn’t look. Doesn’t press into her mind, no matter how wide she opens. He can’t see her, tries not to feel her. He can barely hear her breathing over the sound of his own gulping breaths. He needs to ground against something, to reach out and _touch_ her, but… But…

“ _No_.” He tries to shove her hands away, but she clings to them instead.

“Shh…”

“I hate you,” he announces, petulant.

“You don’t.”

“I do!”

Long-nailed fingers catch his chin, holding him in place. Kylo stares back, stares and demands that Ap’lek hate him, too. Demands that she call him pathetic, or weak, or useless, or childish, or a waste of space, because she _has_ to think those things, doesn’t she? Everyone else did! He demands that she throw him from the room, and demands he’s—

“Kylo.”

“ _I hate you.”_

“Fine. Hate me. Remember that you are safe, now, even to be angry. Even to hate.”

He screams again, and the chairs are sent flying into the walls by his tense, angry little fit. Minor casualties.

“Kylo, that’s _enough_.” And then Ap’lek pulls him up by the back of the neck and against her chest. A momentary refusal, and then he succumbs, pushing his face into her neck to let her gather him in her arms.

He weeps. Weeps for his mother, and for his father. For all the choices he never had, and for how frightening it all suddenly seems. After a few seconds, his knees give way, and he sinks to the floor.

And Ap’lek follows. She sets him down gently, _so gently_ , all the while keeping him close.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and he means it this time.

“I know.” More stroking, as she gently sways him back and forth. “I know. I am, too.” Her fingers trace over his lips, stroking softly. “You. You are precious. You are beautiful and strong, and I _have_ you. You are fierce and wild, and you need a place to know who you truly are. Let me be that for you now, as I always have.”

“You… You don’t mean it.”

“You know that I do. And I will remind you every day, if I have to. I will pull and pry at you until you are broken open, and then: _I will put you back together again_.”

There’s such a fierceness in her tone. A tenderness and a ferocity in tandem, emotion finally leaking into her voice. Kylo doesn’t need the Force, doesn’t need to _see_ to know that she does mean it. He knows, and he feels the last little barrier inside him shatter and fall way. Boneless, he collapses against her. He sobs harder, sobs with years of frustration. Sobs with terror of the Dark, sobs like he was still the boy who’d been torn in two. Sobs, and feels the gentle fingers on his neck, the lips on his temple.

She holds him, and it doesn’t matter that his throat is raw from all his screaming. That his legs are shaking. That his cock keeps jumping up and down like it doesn’t know what this is actually supposed to _be_. All that matters is the woman holding him, clutching him to her breast. The warmth from her body, the sound of her heart. He weeps, and weeps, and then the tears pass and he is tired.

So tired.

Ap’lek lowers her guard, softens her sharp frequency. _Now_ he’s down. Leaning so heavily on her, his arms draped limply around her.

 _Forget her_ , she urges softly. _Forget them both. I am all you need, and you are all I need. And, together, we will be limitless._

“I know,” he quivers.

Ap’lek holds him until the anger subsides, and Kylo is left shaking in the aftermath. Trying to make sense of it. Things build and need to be purged, sometimes. Anger, frustration. Despair. Fear. Loneliness. These are the things that fuel the Dark Side, and he knows that letting them in will only make him a stronger warrior. But sometimes… Sometimes…

“I am with you, _pur’vyshtal’i_ ,” she murmurs.

“I know.


	12. Chapter 12

“What do you want, Ap’lek?” Kylo murmurs to her in the dark.

His fingertip traces along her cheek with more gentleness than anyone would think possible, from such an unwieldy weapon as he. But here they lie, wrapped around one another in his bed, oblivious to themselves but for their delirium. Their minds are as intertwined as their bodies, yielding so much trust and power to one another.

“We only ever talk about what I want,” he says, “But you have things that you want, too. You must.”

Her eyes flit away, and she thinks for a long time before she answers. Strangely, he can feel her mind pull away from his. “I want to see you insert yourself into glory.”

His brow furrows. “’Lek.”

“I want to be there when all of your hot, black rage rips open. I want your fingertips to scar me, so I can have a record of every time you’ve touched me.”

For the first time, it occurs to Kylo that Ap’lek, _his Ap’lek_ , this person who is so dear to him, may never have been given the option to want. For all of her power, all of her hunger and ambition, she has only ever been _told_.

Not like Kylo. He, who was raised on tales of his own noble bloodline.

_New spark of hope. Don’t let us down._

She never heard any of that. She only ever heard… _Him_.

“Something that’s got nothing to do with me,” he coaxes, doing his best, now, “There has to be something.”

Again, she has to think for a long time before she can answer. And when she does, it is little more than a whisper. “I want to remember when my nightmares were clearer.”

He falls asleep quickly, that night, draped so heavily over her. His mouth hangs open when he sleeps sometimes, breaths coming loud against her ear, fluttering through her hair. The occasional cough or snort in his sleep. He’s so painfully human, sometimes. She can’t tell if it’s endearing or frustrating.

Partway through the night, he wakes. It wakes her, too, though he doesn’t notice. Half-asleep, he stumbles out of bed, across the room. And then he stops. Mid-stride, he freezes. Tenses. And when he speaks aloud, “Yeah, me too,” Ap’lek knows precisely what is happening.

It’s her. It’s the scavenger. Sidious has forced the bond, once more. Connected them.

“I didn’t hate him,” Kylo murmurs.

Ap’lek lies completely still, watching him through just-open eyes. Listening.

“Why what?” he challenges, taking another step away from her, “Why what? Say it.” And then, after a beat, “Your parents threw you away like garbage. But you can’t stop needing them. It’s your greatest weakness.”

A strange blend of emotion hits her, then. Pride and vindication, mixed with an odd sense of betrayal.

He scoffs. “Skywalker. Did he tell you what happened that night? He had sensed my power. As he senses yours. And he feared it.” Again, he steps forward. And the words that slip from his lips make all of the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. “Let the past die. Kill it if you have to. That’s the only way to become what you were meant to be.”

Behind him, in the darkness and the quiet, Ap’lek’s hands tighten into fists.

And then, with a gasp, and a backwards stumble, Kylo is free of the bond.

It’s a long time before he returns to bed. And when he does, Ap’lek waits for his arm to snake around her waist, for the heavy warmth of him to settle in against her back.

It never comes.

What Ap’lek wants is to strangle the stars for all they promised her. She wants to reach her hand into the Dark and feel what reaches back.

She wants to be somewhere beautiful, when she dies.

When Kylo’s breathing finally slows, when she feels the veil of sleep cast itself over his mind, she slips from the bed. She wraps the black silk robe over her shoulders and steps into the sitting room. In the still silence, she closes her eyes, and reaches out. It’s a blind fumbling through the darkness. It’s like running her fingertips across the cold, smooth steel of her ship’s hull, searching for a crack. Spiraling outward in search of that painful, blue-gold glow. The color of betrayal. Of conniving, of destruction.

And then the breath catches in her throat. She tightens her grip around the ring of light, holding it in her fist like so many stars.

And then Ap’lek Ren finds herself standing over a bedroll in a simple, stone hut. It’s cold, here, though the scent of a long-dead campfire still hangs in the air. She can hear the rain outside. No stars can be seen through the narrow window.

This is more than Kylo would’ve seen. More than Sidious would’ve shown him. But she is far more powerful than Kylo. Like the Sith Lords of old, she is capable of seizing what she wants for herself. And what she wants is here.

The scavenger is asleep at her feet. And as Ap’lek kneels beside her, the girl tenses. But she does not wake.

“Where are you?” Ap’lek muses aloud, hand hovering over the form of her adversary.

Sweat begins to bead on the girl’s forehead, face twitching.

“No,” she croons, pressing back into her mind like a dull blade, “Don’t fight it. You know you can’t.” After a beat, her lip curls into a cruel, half-smile. “You don’t fear him, any longer. Already, it has turned to hate. And that is the first step along the path to the Dark Side. As though the Dark Side would ever accept a helpless little thing like _you_ into its embrace. No… The Shadow would crush you.”

The girl’s face twitches, her limbs tightening.

“But you do fear me,” Ap’lek realizes aloud, “That’s good. You should fear me.”

The scavenger starts to push, then. Weakly, but still a push. Amusing, really.

“You’re a child,” Ap’lek croons, “A helpless infant, meddling in the affairs of beings far Darker and more powerful than yourself. You have no place in this story. You are no threat.”

_“Then why are you here?”_

There’s a sudden blow to her chest, and her limbs fly out in front of her as she’s pushed, shoved, rent away from the hut. It hurts. That ring of blue-gold light is suddenly so close, so lethally close, and all at once, she can’t breathe. Ap’lek Ren is gasping and winded, clutching at her ribs, and when she looks around, she realizes she’s back aboard the Finalizer. Sprawled gracelessly across the floor of Kylo’s quarters, sweat clinging to her brow as she pants.

Only then does the panic really take root.

What the _fuck_ was that?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hell yeah, Rey, kick her weird ass


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Skippable, if you don't intend to read Sunspots

For Ap’lek Ren, it has been another long, lonely night spent wandering through the shadows of the ship. Ever since this chase with the Resistance began, sleep has seemed to elude her. Like the chaos outside has invaded even her unconscious thoughts. Sometimes, it helps to stand at the viewport in the command tower, and watch the enemy fleet slowly thin out. She lets herself become drunk and sated by all of their fear and uncertainty, and most nights, it puts her to sleep. But it’s eight bells, now, and she’s as restless as ever. She could go to Kylo’s quarters and wake him. Make him fuck her until she’s completely exhausted. But she is too tired for him, now. Too tired for his strange, possessive brand of love.

 _No_ , she decides. _I’ll lie in bed and suffer_. And so, dejected, delirious with exhaustion, she returns to the lift. But when it arrives, she is shocked to find that it is not empty. Inside stands the securities technician with long, red hair. What this man (boy, really) is doing awake and wandering around, out of uniform, at this hour, she can’t begin to guess.

His eyes rise to flit briefly across her mask; those too-big, too-blue eyes, perpetually red-rimmed. And then he panics, and offers a cowering kind of bow. “L-lord Ren,” he whimpers, backing into the corner.

His fear is overwhelming. He doesn’t want to be trapped in this lift with her, he wants to bolt. Scurry past, out into the hall, until he’s as far away from her as he can get. But she doesn’t let him. Whether it is out of cruelty or fascination, even she cannot quite determine. The doors snap shut behind her, and she selects her deck. It’s about as far from their current location as is physically possible, on this ship. It will be a long ride.

Ap’lek observes the boy with a kind of dark fascination. She can tell that he senses her gaze, it is all too evident in the way he cringes away from her. She’s seen him before, slinking around the dark corners of the ship, so desperate to go unnoticed that it actually makes him more noticeable. He’d been on Starkiller, too, and the _Finalizer._ She remembers him, because she’s only ever seen two Human men with red hair. But this is the first time she’s ever really _looked_ at him. And she finds herself fascinated.

Nothing about him seems to mesh with this ship, this place, this time. He is, objectively, quite beautiful. Bright, pale skin, fiery hair cascading down to his shoulders. Beautiful lips. No more than 18 or 19, by Human measures. He’s wearing a threadbare, black sweater (no doubt surplus from the a Stormtrooper’s winter uniform), the neckline of which is so stretched-out that it hangs off-center to expose one of his bony, alabaster shoulders. He has the ends of his sleeves balled up in his fists, and he stands with his arms crossed protectively in front of him. For the first time, she notices the jagged, blue slaver’s brand carved haphazardly above his left eyebrow. “ _Male_ ,” it reads. But the sloppy, stilted script makes it look as though his skull has been cracked open, and then hastily stitched back together again. And there are soft whirring and clicking sounds coming from his direction, though the source is difficult to pinpoint.

 _What are you_ doing _here?_ she wonders.

Ap’lek cannot contain her curiosity. Doesn’t need to. “Technician.”

He cowers even further. “Oh,” he whispers, so softly it’s barely audible, “Oh, no…”

“Look at me,” she commands.

He flinches as though she’s drawn her sabers, and though he turns towards her, his gaze flits upwards for only the briefest of moments. It’s then that she realizes: the sounds are coming from his eyes. Synthetic, and very low-quality.

“S-sir?” he stutters.

“Look at me, Tech,” she repeats, and again, his eyes dart across her mask.

As gently as she can, she reaches into his mind. What she finds there horrifies her.

She sees a boy, green-eyed and orphaned and nameless, born on some unimportant, Outer Rim rock. He’s sold to the Invisible Market, who sell him to a gang, who sell him to a gang, who sell him to a gang, over and over. She sees a young man on Siskeen, crammed into a room with nothing but screens, screens, numbers, cameras, and wires, wires, wires. Starving. Beaten. Neglected.

He’s so smart. He’s so frightened.

He’s in agony.

He shrinks. He learns to make himself smaller.

She sees a cruel woman with an ugly, scarred face wrap a hand around his throat, press a jackknife to his belly. She makes him weep, but his tears displease her. Her men hold him down while she lifts the blade to one of his wide, green eyes. He screams, and screams, and screams—

Ap’lek withdraws, nearly gasping. _Like me_ , she thinks, _by the Left-Handed God, so like me_.

It feels like something she should’ve have seen. No one else ever has. And, all at once, it seems as though she’s been entrusted to safeguard something both fragile and beautiful. She wants to take him in her arms and allow him to weep. She wants to care for him. She is, after all, so fiercely protective of such unwanted, broken things.

Still backed into his corner, he watches in terror as she reaches for the jaw of her helmet. When she lifts it away, and he sees her face for the first time, he whimpers in reverent fear. Dathomirian. Her face carries a kind of proud, terrible beauty, with noble features and something so deadly shining in her silver eyes.

“What’s your name?” she asks gently; so gently that it surprises even her. It is tenderness she did not know she still possessed.

His gaze darts between her eyes and her lips as he quivers, “W-what?”

She extends a hand towards him. “Your name.”

He reacts as though she’s thrust a venomous snake towards him, his back slamming into the wall. “SD-O 67-3121.” He blurts it out like she’s interrogating him, before adding a quick, “Sir.”

Ap’lek furrows her brow, saddened immeasurably. SD-O. _Securities Droid- Organic._ “That’s hardly an appropriate name.”

He shrinks back further, seemingly unable to tear his gaze from her face. “It’s just, like— The only one I’ve ever had, I guess, I’m sorry, sir. People call me Techie, sometimes, but I—I don’t know, it’s stupid, I’m sorry—”

There’s another name, buried deep in his mind. She can see it. But it’s something he seems desperate to keep hidden. He carries it around in his chest like a precious secret, and so she does not say it aloud. She does not ask.

“There is a special plane of agony in the Netherworld,” she murmurs, “Reserved for those Masters who torture and take flesh from the ones most loyal to them.”

He stiffens slightly, heaving a single, shaking breath. “There— There is?”

“It’s what I choose to believe,” she says, “For your sake… As well as mine.”

She shows him a flash of Mustafar, giving him only the briefest taste of her suffering. The smell of her organic limbs melting away. The cruel, triumphant cackle of her Master.

Only a flash. She doesn’t want to cause him any more pain. Still, he wails in panic, raising his hands defensively. After a moment, he opens his eyes and looks around. Still in the lift.

“O-oh,” he whimpers, looking down at her cybernetics. His eyes whirr and click as they refocus. “Oh. That’s— I’m sorry. I didn’t know about all of that.”

The earnest sweetness of it makes her cold heart ache. “Very few people do.”

“Oh.”

“If you’re ever treated unkindly here, you come to me,” she instructs, “Not your commanding officer. Straight to me.”

“I— I don’t really, like… _Like_ confrontation,” he whispers.

“I know. But I do.”

He blinks up her, pupils tightening and widening a few times in quick succession, _click-click-click-click_. “Oh.”

“ _Mohtiyi_ _woiunoks_ ,” she murmurs sadly, removing her gloves and stepping forward to stroke her thumbs along his cheekbones.

He inhales sharply. _High Sith, why is she speaking High Sith? How is it that I even know that? And_ — _Brave little one. Ap’lek Ren, the Enforcer’s Enforcer, called me her brave little one_. He succumbs gratefully to it, leaning into the unexpected warmth of her palms. Touch-starved. The ache of it seeps into her own bones, and she wants only to soothe the pain.

“I have you, now,” she reassures, gently dragging some of the rust from his lower eyelids with her knuckle.

He exhales sharply, bottom lip quivering like a child. “Thank you,” he murmurs, “Thank you, thank you.” It sounds less like he’s speaking to her, so much as to whatever higher power has brought them together and spared him. He rests his trembling hands over hers and strokes his thumb along her knuckles. His hands are far softer and gentler than the hands of an ex-slave ought to be. Not dissimilar from the rest of him.

“ _Mohtiyi woiunoks_ ,” she repeats, and before he knows what’s happening, she’s drawing him up into her, laying her lips so sweetly against his. He makes a soft sound of surprise against her, still shaking. She combs her fingers back through his hair, and his knees buckle beneath him.

_Ap’lek Ren is kissing me in a lift. She’s kissing me in a lift, and I don’t want it to stop._

“What in Maker’s name do you think you’re doing, Ren?”

The distinctive voice sends a bolt of genuine fear up through the Technician’s spine. He whips around to see that the lift doors have opened, and none other than General Hux is standing in the doorway.

“Sorry, sir,” the Technician squeaks, springing away from the Knight of Ren, and Hux steps aside to let him out. “ _Sorrysorrysorrysorrysorry_.” It’s not his deck, but he scurries away nonetheless.

“What are you doing, skulking around at this hour?” she snaps, replacing her gloves as he joins her in the lift.

“It’s my ship,” he pointedly reminds her as he presses the button for his deck, “What are _you_ doing to my Technician?”

“You misunderstand,” she says sternly.

“Do I?”

“Yes. You know nothing of the strength in that boy.”

“ _That_ one?” he sneers, and she can hear the veiled hurt in his voice, “His ghastly appearance alone disturbs the rest of the crew, to say nothing of his demeanor. But I’ll be damned if I don’t to get my money’s worth out of him. Organic Security Droids don’t come cheap, especially when they’re as proficient as he is.”

“Don’t talk about him like that,” she cautions.

He pays her no mind. “What he’s doing _out of his server room_ , I can’t fathom. I’ll have a word with his commanding—”

“You’ll do no such thing!” she interrupts, and the lift shudders dangerously, the overhead lights flickering.

He rounds on her, face stony. “You presume to give _me_ orders?”

She exhales a hollow laugh, replacing her helmet as the lift begins to slow. “In this moment, he has more of my heart than anyone else on this ship. That makes your position a rather dangerous one, now, doesn't it?” With that, she strides from the lift. But guilt takes hold in her chest, and just before the doors close, she raises a hand. They freeze, and open again.

“What?” he demands, after a beat.

“It is brilliant, what you’ve done, Armitage,” she says softly, “The hyperspace tracker.”

He straightens up, casting her a proud smirk. “Thank you.”

“Leave that boy alone.”

His brow furrows. And though he does not understand, he nods. “Alright.”

“Thank you.” With that, she releases the doors, and the General is alone.


	14. Chapter 14

“Who said you could come in here?” Hux snaps, still scrolling through reports on his datapad. He’s seated at the desk in his ready room, beneath the ecliptic shadow of Ap’lek Ren.

He’d been _trying_ to have himself a bit of a gloat, all alone in here. A cigarette and a cup of tea and a moment of peace, while he celebrated a job well done. And the knowledge that Kylo is just down the hall, bearing the well-deserved wrath of the Supreme Leader, makes it all the sweeter. But no: here she is, _again_ , to sour his triumph. Just as she had on Starkiller, she’s come to turn every touch on his skin to an agonized sting, turn his hard-earned satisfaction to ashes in his mouth.

“He’s in there,” Ap’lek seethes, as the door closes behind her. “With _her_.”

The General doesn’t even afford her the courtesy of an upward glance. “Take that ridiculous thing off, before you speak to me. I feel like I’m talking to a droid.”

Frustrated, she wrenches the helmet from her head and flings it across the room. “There!” she snaps, but he’s still staring at his datapad. “ _Armitage_!”

He cocks an eyebrow, looking up at her expectantly.

“Why did you allow this?”

He exhales a mocking laugh. “Why did I _allow_ —? This may be my ship, but the matter at hand is hardly of any concern to me. I do as the Supreme Leader commands, as should you. Besides: you begged for months to have your autonomy from me, and now you have it. So, even if I could do something about this, which, may I remind you, _I cannot_ , I simply don’t care to.”

Ap’lek seethes. “What?”

“I,” he emphasizes, lingering so cruelly on each word as he keeps scrolling, “Don’t. _Care_.”

With a clench of her fist, she sends the datapad flying from his grip to shatter against the far wall.

“Yes, very mature.” He’s entirely unfazed.

She raises a hand towards him. “Watch your mouth.”

With a kind of terrifying calm, Hux puts his cigarette out, and laces his gloved hands together on the tabletop. He leans forward, looking up at her with an expression bordering dangerously on condescension. “What did you think would happen, here, Ren?” he asks so calmly, “What was your expectation? That you could come in here and complain to me about your trivial little _romantic quarrels_ —”

“ _How dare you!”_

“ _Romantic quarrels_ ,” he powers through, voice beginning to rise in pitch and volume, “Under the guise of a professional conflict, and I’d offer myself as a shoulder for you to cry on?”

“Watch your mouth,” she repeats, adding a vitriolic, “ _Human_.”

“ _Oh_.” His face darkens with self-satisfied comprehension. “Oh, no, I see. You came looking for some kind of sordid revenge fuck, didn’t you? Something to throw in his face.”

Times like these, Ap’lek Ren is reminded of how truly unstoppable Hux would be, were he a Force-user.

But before she can respond, the comm on Hux’s desk rings. He all but smashes it with his fist, and they both shout in perfect unison, “ _Not now_!”

He looks up at her in disgust, and she returns the expression in earnest.

“But _Sir_ —” It’s Mitaka. “The Resistance fleet is undertaking some very strange maneuvers, and we need—"

“Fine,” he snaps, “ _Fine_. I’ll be out shortly.”

“Well?” Ap’lek demands as he rises to his feet.

“Well, what, Ren?”

She scoffs. “Are you going to fuck me, or not?”

At that, Hux _laughs_. It’s cruel and mocking, his head thrown back with relish. And it is with great satisfaction that he announces, “No.”

It hurts. Perhaps more than seeing Kylo drag that scavenger towards the Throne Room, more than knowing what he was thinking as he did so. She doesn’t know why. It’s that _thing_ , that unnamable thing, from the one night they spent together. It’s been festering in her chest all the time, and now it’s snapping its jaws at her heart.

“Oh, but do go on,” he adds casually, “I like you _begging_.”

“I’ll kill you,” she replies, somewhat weakly.

“I don’t believe you,” he sighs, straightening his uniform, “Now, get out of my room.”

* * *

Ap’lek does not know what she will see, when she walks into the throne room. She can sense that a massive rift in the Force is waiting for her behind the door; it’s so severe and destructive that it’s like a scar through space and time itself. But the nature of it remains shrouded, to her. The only way to know is to look.

Kylo lies unconscious, amidst a veritable battlefield of dead Imperial Guards. The room seems to have been rent apart by whatever he’s done: severed wires hang from the ceiling, raw and deadly. All around, bodies and debris are burning. Hux is standing over his insensate rival, blank-faced and silent. He has not noticed her, yet.

There’s another presence, too, lingering in the air on fading ripples. The girl, the so-called Jedi. She had been here, too. Where she is, now, Ap’lek cannot guess. With a pang of envy, she realizes that she has but to ask her lover; the man that should be hers, and hers alone.

And then she sees it. The body of their Supreme Leader lies in pieces beside his throne. Even through her fear and uncertainty, she cannot deny the triumphant thrill that courses through her chest. It’s quickening, it’s vivifying; overwhelming like a shot of adrenaline to her heart. _He has taken the bait_ , she thinks proudly. _We are one step closer._

Hux moves. She sees it out of the corner of her eye, he’s brushing back the left side of his greatcoat. His hand moves to his hip.

She’s across the room in an instant, moving with a kind of silent speed and grace possessed only by Dathomirians. The General doesn’t even sense her, until her hand wraps around his wrist. And then he looks up in shock, and he sees that her eyes are very, very close.

“Don’t,” she commands softly.

His resolve wavers slightly against those piercing, silver-white eyes. “Why not?” he whispers, almost pleading with her.

She tightens her grip. “We _need_ him.”

Beside them, Kylo begins to stir. Both Hux and Ap’lek reach to cover his blaster, hastily pulling his greatcoat back over it. For an instant, their fingers brush together. He realizes she’s not wearing gloves. He wishes he wasn’t wearing gloves.

With what seems like great effort, Kylo pushes himself up into a seated position.

“What happened?” she demands, still lost in that place between horror and awe, not yet comprehending.

He whips around, looking up at her as though the sound of her voice has caused him physical pain. He casts her a critical, disdainful look, before turning to Hux. “The girl murdered Snoke.” He rises shakily to his feet, stumbling towards the wide window. His dark and piercing gaze fixes on the distant battle.

Hux’s eyes flit to meet Ap’lek’s, as if searching for confirmation. She gives him a quick, nearly imperceptible shake of her head. _He’s lying_. The General’s brow twitches with understanding.

“What happened?” Kylo demands.

“She took Snoke’s escape craft,” Hux explains.

Kylo nods briskly. “I know where she’s going. Get all of our forces down to that Resistance base.” He turns from this vigil, striding for the door with renewed purpose. “Let’s finish this.”

“Finish this?” Hux repeats in disbelief, “Who do you think you’re talking to?”

Kylo freezes.

“You presume to command _my_ army? Our Supreme Leader is dead!” he roars, “ _We have no ruler_!”

Ap’lek’s eyes fly wide. She can sense what Kylo means to do, a split second before he does it. “ _Vyshtal’i_ , no!” Desperate, she launches herself for him.

But it’s too late. Hux has fallen to his knees, clutching at his throat. Panic is rising in his eyes, as it had aboard the transport vessel from Starkiller base. Gasping. Choking.

Ap’lek pulls at Kylo’s outstretched arm. “ _Tze, ay’Vyshtal’i_ ,” she begs, “Please!” It's less about saving Hux, she realizes, and more about exacting control. Proving that she still _has_ control. Over him, over the situation. Over the Force.

Before she can defend herself, he’s flung her away. Winded, she falls to a crumpled heap beside Hux.

“The Supreme Leader is dead,” Kylo snarls, looking the General in the eye.

Ap’lek feels the wave of resignation ebb from him. Feels the defeat as though it were her own. He blinks hard.

“Long live the Supreme Leader,” he chokes, blackness beginning to creep into the corners of his vision.

Kylo releases him. He looks to the woman at his feet.

She raises her palms to him, bows her head. “Long live the Supreme Leader.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See end notes for a breakdown of the U'Zabrak word he uses

The General is headed for the bridge when he spots the Storm Troopers carrying her through the hall. Amidst all of the post-battle chaos, as the ship swarms with panicked men, eerily white for the salt of Crait, she is what stands out to him. Draped limply across a stretcher between two low-ranked nobodies as they haul her carelessly through the corridor. They drag her through the ship like cargo, as though they’ve no inkling whatsoever of the precious, irreplaceable thing they carry. She’s not wearing her helmet, and her face seems even paler than usual. Even against the black material of her robes, he can see the blood.

And Kylo is still nowhere to be found.

The _coward_.

Still limping, still nursing his pounding headache, he follows them to the medbay.

She’s utterly broken. That’s the summary and distillation of all the pages and pages of diagnosis on the datapad by her bed. Shattered bones, ruptured organs and internal bleeding; by all accounts, she shouldn’t even be alive.

She’d ridden out with the main assault. Not safe and protected in the AT-AT, shouting orders alongside Kylo and himself, but piloting a TIE fighter. And, for the first time, Hux had glimpsed her true power.

Her ship had taken heavy damage, and she’d been forced to eject. And then, in an act of either brilliance or insanity, she charged the enemy lines on foot, entirely alone. Twin sabers drawn, she danced through the beams from the Resistance V-4X-Ds; a wild, deadly thing, waging her own personal war against Maker knows what. Hux had personally witnessed her dispatch six of them, either by deflecting their own blasts back at them, or slicing them apart as they whipped by. And then he’d been… _Incapacitated_ himself, and he’d lost her. When he came to, again, it was over, and they were far from the red-streaked battlefield.

The entire time they were in the AT-AT, Hux never saw Kylo so much as glance down at her.

He stands at the foot of her bed, his body held at a rigid form of parade rest, for four hours. He waits in silence while the droids work; while muscle and sinew and flesh are stitched back together. While shattered joints are replaced with ceramic and steel. While circuits are re-wired, Cortosis welded back together, and synthflesh reconstructed. One of the droids tries to approach him, scanning for injury, but he waves it away.

Finally, the procedures are complete. The General waits until their privacy is assured, and then he steps up beside her, nearly stumbling for the stiffness in his limbs.

All at once, he realizes that he doesn’t want her to die. In this moment, Hux finally begins to understand how much he’s come to appreciate her. Of course, there was the bickering, the insubordination, and her disrespectful habit of replying aloud to his private thoughts. To say nothing of the damnable way she’d light his cigarettes from across the room, just to remind him she was there. But it had become so familiar. So normal, almost comfortable. And then she’d leave on one kriffing secret mission or another, and he’d do nothing but worry about her until she got back. _Worry_ , of all pointless, inane practices. It had gotten to the point that he would hesitate for a moment before lighting a cigarette, secretly waiting for her to do it for him, even if he knew that she was lightyears away. And then she’d stride back onto the bridge, shoulder to shoulder with her great, hulking beast, and the cycle would start over.

And that was to say nothing of the way his thoughts of her seemed to torture him, when he was alone at night. The way he’d toss and turn in bed, dwelling on every sweet, painful detail of their single collision. He would pick at the memory like a wound, refusing to let it heal. He is quite certain, now, that she’ll occupy a space in his mind forever. _Damn her_ , he thinks. _Damn her for doing this to me._

But now, as Hux is faced with the sudden threat that this may be the end, that he’ll soon be left with only his memories of such limited, fleeting moments shared together, he finds that he hates it. It’s like a bitter taste on his tongue that he can’t seem to spit out.

And he realizes he’s entirely unable to tear his gaze away from her face. A few lines of synthweave now mar her perfect, pale skin.

He slips a hand into hers, squeezing tightly for a moment.

“My orders were quite clear,” he whispers, struggling to find the strength in his voice, “You’ll commit no further unsanctioned departures from this ship. You…” he swallows hard, “I do not grant you my clearance to leave, at this time.”

He’s about to withdraw when he feels it: the slight curving of her wrist, fingertips pressing lightly into the back of his hand.

He doesn’t move again until the droids return to drag her off to the bacta tank.

* * *

Five days later, Ap’lek Ren finally regains consciousness.

Hux rushes the medbay, desperate to lay eyes on her. When he rounds the corner, she’s perched cross-legged on the edge of the metal table, still shivering and dripping with bacta. Shoulders hunched forward, she rests her elbows on her knees. He can see her shuddering through the experience of each drawn breath, as though it were taking great effort. Her dark hair is soaking wet, and plastered to her shoulders.

She’s wearing next to nothing: just a towel draped around her neck and a few discreetly-placed thermal bandages. It leaves all of her new scars exposed. And there are many. And though she seems disoriented, and more than a little unsteady, he can tell that her strength has been restored.

A cadre of med droids swarms around her, taking scans and readings, checking her vital signs. Eyes downturned, she seems not to have noticed the General, yet.

And then she tiredly lifts her face towards him, and he snaps to a quick parade rest. No scars. His lips press into a thin line as he stifles the small sound of relief that threatens to tear from his throat.

Her silver eyes meet his for a long moment before flitting away to take in the sight of him. He has his greatcoat draped over his shoulders, the sleeves hanging empty at his sides.

“General,” she tiredly acknowledges, making no effort at modesty.

He struggles with what to say, before finally settling on, “You look like hell.” At once, he doesn’t know why he said it. She’s as terribly beautiful as he’s ever seen her. Raw and real.

She casts him a curious half-smile, exhaling a kind of wounded, sarcastic laugh. He watches as her eyes linger on his bruised face, his split lip. She lifts a finger towards his wounds. “Did we fuck, again?”

He feels his face redden, despite himself. “Very amusing.”

Ap’lek waves the droids away, frustrated by their attention.

“Don’t break my droids, Ren,” he wearily cautions.

“What happened on Crait? I remember ejecting, and I know I managed to pin a few more of those rebel scum from the ground, but after that… I don’t know.”

“I watched you pin at least six, with your sabers,” he confirms, unable to mask the reverence in his voice. “When they found you, you were crushed between two of the V-4X-Ds.”

“I don’t remember that,” she confesses, rubbing at her forehead.

“Something about a Resistance pilot making a suicide run for the siege cannon, I don’t know the details. The men are saying that it took one of the rebels flying into you with his speeder, to take you down.” After a pause, he impulsively adds, “ _Devsta’rak’i_.”

His voice hitches awkwardly on the last syllable, as though he’d debated its addition, and then immediately regretted his decision. She gives him a curious smile. It’s the closest to _playful_ she’s ever heard him. His face reddens even further as he looks away.

_Too personal_ , he chastises himself. _She’s not_ yours.

“What of the outcome?” she asks.

“A tactical victory, for us,” he relays, head held high with pride, “We stormed the base, although a handful of Resistance survivors managed to escape. But… You’ll be pleased to know that Luke Skywalker is dead.” He adds it like an afterthought.

Pride and vindication flare up in her chest, she sits up a little straighter. “What?”

He nods, and she can sense that, for reasons that are unclear to her, he has no desire to discuss that part of the battle.

She does not have time to dwell on it. All at once, she feels his heart rate speed up. Eyes downcast, he takes a quick, lunging step towards her. He reaches into the breast pocket of his greatcoat, and then hastily thrusts something into her hand. “For you.”

It takes her a moment to register what it is she’s holding. It’s a small medallion, tarnished red along one edge, from the salt of Crait. It bears the starbird symbol of the old Rebel Alliance.

“Where did this come from?” she marvels, tracing her fingers along the raised symbol.

“It was discovered within the base,” he says, “Half-buried and forgotten for 35 years or more. A relic, resurrected from the time of the Empire. Not… Not unlike yourself, I suppose.”

Ap’lek looks up, and realizes that he is still standing very close. But his eyes are downturned, as if to shy away from her.

_Does he know?_ she wonders briefly _, Has he seen through my deception? Surely not._

“I— I present it, now, as a token of battle. I gift our victory on Crait to you.”

She’s speechless; entirely floored by his actions. At a loss, she reaches out and clasps his forearm. With the contact, the faintest memory suddenly flickers to life in her mind. A presence beside her while she slept, lingering for hours, lending her strength. A hand in hers, offering comfort. Like a distant flame, guiding her through the long, silent abyss.

She points to his face, realization suddenly dawning on her. “You were in the AT-AT. Who did that to you?” She already knows the answer.

He hesitates before responding. And when he does, it’s little more than a whisper. “Your dog.”

Her heart sinks to hear it. “Armitage, I’m so sorry.”

The air in the room suddenly bends and flexes. At the sound of encroaching bootheels, Hux presses his eyes shut, grimacing against what he knows is inevitable. Ap’lek’s head falls forward in quiet dismay, and she releases her gentle hold on his arm.

The voice of Kylo Ren sounds from over Hux’s shoulder. “Get out.”

He turns, bows. “As you command, Supreme Leader.” With that, the General retreats.

Ap’lek feels his hands on her cheeks, tilting her face upwards. He’s looking upon her with reverence, and she can feel the warmth and love ebbing from his chest. But she leaves her elbows resting atop her knees, hands balling into fists.

“Where have you been?” she asks, barely masking her bitterness.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, leaning his forehead against hers. “The defeat was too much, I—”

“There was no defeat,” she snaps, “You killed Skywalker.”

“I know,” he concedes, running his thumb along her cheekbone, “I know. It’s the _girl_. She’s poisoning me. I can feel her digging away at my heart.”

Hearing it causes her near physical pain. Blinking back the threat of tears, she asks, “Do I not also have your heart, my prince?”

He pulls back, looks her straight in the eye. The expression on his face is gently wounded. Raw, and vulnerable as he’d been the night she’d rescued him from Starkiller base.

“You have _all_ of my heart,” he exhales in disbelief, drawing her into a tight embrace.

Ap’lek is defenseless against it. She feels the power coursing through him, stronger now than ever before. She feels the seductive pull of his aphelion darkness, and yearns to fall into it.

“Please, my love,” he begs, lifting weakly at her hands, trying to wrap them around him.

With that, she finally acquiesces. She slips her arms around his neck, letting her fingers weave through his hair. He exhales in relief to feel it, as though a heavy weight has been lifted from his shoulders.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, “I’m so sorry, _pur’nuin’i_ , here—” He tears the cloak from his own shoulders and wraps it around her, smothering her in warmth and comfortable blackness.

“Kiss me,” she begs, looking up at him with tears in her eyes.

He acquiesces, pressing his lips to hers as though to drink from her mouth.

“Don’t you _ever_ leave me like this again,” she commands, clinging to him in desperation.

“I won’t,” he murmurs, “I won’t.”

He follows her to her quarters, silently nagging the entire time. Like a child.

_You can’t be angry with me_ , he insists. _Ap’lek, please._

_Yes, I can. You abandoned me for_ days, _Kylo_.

_I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m sorry._

She whips around as they reach her door, startling him. “ _I_ do!” she says aloud, “ _I_ know!” She all but punches her door control, storming inside.

To her great dismay, he stops it closing with his hand, and pursues her.

As soon as they’re alone, she squares up to him. “You were thinking of _her_! You were off, chasing after _her_!”

“I told you, she’s trying to _poison_ me!” he justifies feebly, pulling her into his arms with dangerous roughness, “But I won’t give in, I won’t! I’m stronger than that! _We’re_ stronger!” He lunges forward, chasing her lips, but she jerks back out of his reach.

“No, I don’t want to fuck you right now!” she snarls, shoving him away.

“Hey!” He snags a fistful of her cloak and yanks her back. “Don’t you walk away from me.”

“Why not?” she spits, “You walked away from me!”

“Stop it!” he commands, taking her roughly by the shoulders and shaking her, “Don’t you talk to me like that!”

“Take your hands off me.”

“No!”

A tangle of rage and fear flares up in her chest. “I said take your hands _off_ me!” She draws in all the power and flame she can manage, and send it all outward in a massive blast. Kylo is thrown backwards, slamming hard into the far wall.

He gasps up at her in shock, winded. For a moment, he looks like he means to retaliate, and so she squares up in preparation for an attack. His anger pulses for one heartbeat, and then two, and three. Growing. But then, without warning, it bursts. All of his fury and defensive indignation cracks and falls away. His expression softens, all of the vulnerable parts of him suddenly flayed open before her.

She _frightened_ him, doing that. She actually frightened him.

“Ap’lek,” he whimpers, and his lip is quivering slightly, “Please.”

She scoffs, looking down at him with something like baffled disgust.

He moans in frustration and despair, sliding down the wall to land hard on his knees. He buries his face in his hands, shoulders beginning to shake. His entire body seems to curl in on itself, as though some external force is crushing in around him. _Please don’t be so angry with me, I_ need _you, please, please, please…_

She can’t deny the guilt she feels. She sighs deeply, rubbing at her temples. “Kylo—”

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he sobs, “It’s all— All so _tangled_ , I’m no one, I’m nowhere, I— I can feel every single person on this ship, crawling all over each other like a dish of worms, and sometimes it feels like everyone in the Galaxy c-can _touch_ me, I feel it _all_ , but—” He heaves a deep, shuddering breath, his body wracked with tears, “But when you’re near me, it gets so quiet, _so quiet_ , and things just fall into place for a little while. They make sense.”

“Kylo…” she murmurs, tiredly stepping over to him.

She feels slightly ridiculous, still covered in Bacta, and draped only in his cloak. But he wraps his arms so desperately around her leg, leaning his shoulder against her thigh.

“I th-thought you were going to die, and there was nothing I could’ve done to stop it. I couldn’t bear to watch.”

“I’m not dead.” She weaves her fingers into his hair, and he whimpers in quiet relief. He lifts his head a little, craning up into her touch. _Damn you for this_ , she thinks.

“I’m sorry,” he nearly begs, clinging to her as he slowly rocks back and forth. _I love you, I love you, please don’t be angry with me, please don’t hurt me again._

She blinks hard. “I know,” she murmurs, “I’m sorry, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Devsta _means "wild, dangerous thing." Say _Devsta'rak _and it becomes "wild, dangerous thing that I am in awe of." Add the last syllable, _Devsta'rak'i _, and then it's "MY wild, dangerous thing that I am in awe of."______
> 
> ______Smooth, Hux. Veeeeeery smooth._ _ _ _ _ _


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love how Adam Driver says, "What?"

By the time she slips quietly into Kylo’s quarters, it is either very late, or very early. The ship had been eerily quiet when she’d pulled into the main hangar of the _Supremacy_. Eight bells, crew practically asleep on their feet. But they snapped to a keen attention upon her arrival, and tended to her ship with a quicker, more rapt attention than normal. It was only after she had left the hangar that she realized it was the first time that any of them had seen her face. After 13 long years hidden beneath that stifling, false mask, it had begun to feel like a part of her. But today, and for every day after, she is free.

Darth Annihila hides no more.

The time has come to move into the final phase of their grand design. The Knights of Ren have been rallied, they’ll rendezvous with the _Steadfast_ in a matter of days. And how she yearns for the reunion with her old friends. They’ve spent so very many long, hard years apart. She yearns for their victory, which is now so close that she can feel it teasing at her fingertips.

Not the victory that Sidious has planned. _Her_ victory.

Even still, exhaustion dulls the hum of excitement in her blood; the need for sleep hanging heavily in her limbs. Her mind feels raw and exposed, after all she’d just done. It had been such a long journey to Exegol, such a trying time on the planet, and such a long journey back. And she still has one more task to complete before she can rest.

She disables the security field at Kylo’s door with a wave of her hand, as only she can. As she crosses the sitting room, she strips away all the dark, flowing layers of her robes. They’re different, now.

_But_ , she realizes, _so am I_. Both will take getting used to.

Albrekh had outdone himself for her. Gaberwool has been replaced by Susurra-weave, to further augment her naturally quiet and graceful movement. A breastplate of black ironweave, snaked with red veins of Sarrassian iron, clings to her torso. Beautiful pieces. Fitting of a Sith Lord. But for now, they are cast to the floor with a tired carelessness.

Kylo is asleep in his bed, naked and tangled in his black sheets. He lays face down, his body twisted strangely. As gently as she can, she drapes herself across the hard bulk of him, laying her cheek between his shoulder blades. Though they are comparable in height, her build is so slight that he barely registers her presence. In the end, it is the feeling of her mind that wakes him, not her body.

He begins to stir beneath her, questing blindly for her hand. He brings her fingertips to his lips, sensing her tandem excitement and exhaustion. She’s like a raw nerve. And there’s something different, in her. It is either something he’s never sensed before, or else something new entirely.

“What is it?”

She steels herself for a moment before answering. “My work is complete,” she whispers, “My ascent… Is now complete.”

He rolls over, pulling her over to lay on his chest. His brow is furrowed, eyes searching across her face in the darkness. With gentler hands than anyone would think possible, he combs the long hair from her face.

“’Lek,” he implores, “What—”

“No,” she interrupts, heart hammering in her chest, “That has never been my name.”

“What?”

“Henceforth, I will be known to all as Darth Annihila.”

He blinks up at her, stunned. “What?”

“So has it been, for seven years.” She holds strong, but her pride is beginning to twist into anxiety at the sight of his face.

At last. The secrets that she had, at one time, held so close pass through her as through a pane of glass. “Why haven’t you told me?”

“I couldn’t. It was my secret to bear. But no longer shall I bear it alone.”

Despite himself, despite his best efforts at control, Kylo has the look of a man who has bitten into an unfamiliar fruit to find a sweeter taste than expected. His smile becomes a ravenous thing, and in one swift movement, he’s exchanged their positions. His legs spread between hers, hands snaking up her sides.

“Annihila.” He whispers the name against her lips, and then steals it back on a kiss. “My Lord.” He noses her chin back, laying kiss after kiss against her neck. “My Lord.”

She has tears in her eyes. Tears of joy, of exhaustion and vindication. She clings to him, curling her fingers through his hair, letting the pride wash over her. “Everything I’ve ever done, I’ve done for us,” she breathes, “So that, someday, you and I could rule the Galaxy as one.”

“My Lord,” he repeats. He’s fumbling between their bodies, now, and she wants so badly to yield. The desire is pouring from him in unstoppable waves - _you’re going to fuck a Sith, and she’s_ so beautiful _, and she’s the only thing you’ve ever, ever loved_ \- and she feels the current beginning to take her. But there is one more thing he must know.

“Listen to me, now, _pur’vyshtal’i_.” Annihila takes his face in her hands, drawing him up again.

“What?” he pants, and she can sense his gentle impatience. His lips are downturned into a pout; an adolescent mimicking adult sexuality.

“My work is complete,” she imparts, paying it no mind, “And now your part in it begins.”

He huffs. “What?”

“You said it yourself, my love: in the history of the Sith, there are always two.”

He doesn’t understand. “And the other…?”

“Darth Sidious lives still.”

It dawns on him slowly, his brow gathering, eyes searching across her face for some sign of deception. “How?”

“He has inhabited a clone body, and he rules from the shadows of Ixigul. Snoke was but a puppet.”

She can sense the quickening in him, and that ridiculous expression melts from his face. “What must I do?”

“I want you to kill him, for me.”

He feels a laugh bubbling up in his chest, but manages to swallow it down before it surfaces. “What?”

“I hate him,” she says, and the fire in her eyes is a testament to it, “I hate him for what he did to Vader, for what he has done to me. To you. And I want you to kill him. So that our reign can begin.”

Kylo doesn’t even stop to think. “Yes. How?” _Anything, yes, yes, anything! Just tell me!_

“You’ll need a Wayfinder.”

He knows what it means. Anticipation crackles behind his eyes. “Where?”

“Mustafar.”

* * *

“Why can’t you just take me yourself?” Kylo needles, for what seems like the millionth time.

“That’s not the way it’s done,” she negates, yet again.

She’s walking with him through the hanger, towards the Night Buzzard. The ship is swarming with engineers, readying it for the long flight ahead. The Knights are already within, she can see Kuruk through the windscreen, running through his pre-flight.

_Not the way it’s done_. Sith nonsense, in Kylo’s opinion. Nearly identical to Jedi nonsense, though neither side will ever acknowledge it. Tradition for the sake of tradition. Empty, meaningless ritual.

“Supreme Leader,” one of the engineers greets as they approach. “Lord Ren. The ship—”

Kylo rankles. “Who said you could speak to her?”

The man stammers, looking around as though the answer was written somewhere on the hangar walls. “S-sir, I—"

_Kylo_ , she scolds.

With a scowl and a wave, Kylo dismisses him. He gathers his engineers, and they scatter.

Annihila draws his attention back to her, gently placing a hand on his cheek. “Come back to me, _pur’vyshtal’i_.”

“I will,” he says, though she can hear the distraction in his voice, see it in the way his eyes refuse to meet hers.

“Kylo,” she presses, lifting his chin with a long-nailed finger. “Come back to me.”

Finally, he meets her gaze. With an expression like he’s been caught, he nods, taking her hand to press his lips to her knuckles.

“Don’t let him speak,” she instructs, straightening his robes, “Let your blade fly swift and sure, and know in your heart that you are an instrument of purest revenge.”

“I know.”

“ _Free us_ ,” she implores. “Break our chains.”

“I will.”

When Kylo returns three days later, clad in a new helmet and backed by the entire Sith fleet, it becomes instantly, undeniably clear: he'd paid no heed to Darth Annihila’s warning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oooh, plot twist!


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another skippable mini-chapter, if you don't intend to read Sunspots

Since her final ascent, Annihila has begun to wait until the quiet hours of Gamma shift before emerging from her quarters. The time is not right for her to reveal herself entirely, not yet. And so, she haunts the ship like a specter, baffling and terrifying anyone who crosses her path. This way, rumors will spread. And there is nothing more powerful than the seed of uncertain fear, planted deeply and thrown wide.

But one such night, she sees her Techie, sitting cross-legged before an open wall panel near the bridge. He’s clad tonight in a dark green First Order jumpsuit, and his fiery hair is pulled back into a little ponytail. Beautiful as always, with his face illuminated by the blue glow of the console he’s tapping away on. He looks up at the distinctive sound of her footsteps, and the look on his face tells her that he’s still frightened of her. But then his eyes meet hers, mechanical pupils shifting and dilating, and she realizes he’s taken by the way she’d painted her face. Smears of red beneath her eyes. Like his.

Annihila casts him a tired nod, and he gives her a tentative little wave. A boy that would wave hello to a Sith Lord is so absolutely, irresistibly endearing.

His supervisor, a heavyset officer, appears from around the corner. He starts at the sight of her bare face, before his eyes flit down to her legs and he realizes who she is. “Lord Ren,” he greets, bowing deeply. And then he notices the Tech, still looking up at her with a kind of tentative, dreamy smile, and he drives the toe of his boot into his ribs. “Who gave you permission to _smile_ at Lord Ren, SD-O? Eyes on your—”

“I did,” she interrupts, and the officer looks to her in shock.

“S-sir?”

“I gave him permission to smile at me.”

And then Techie watches in awe as his commanding officer (who, incidentally, has spent months doing _much_ worse than kicking him in the ribs) is lifted from the ground by his throat and whipped into the far wall. She’s careful to avoid any engineering panels as she does it, however, so as not to make any more work for her sweet boy.

As the officer coughs and sputters, and a trickle of blood snakes its way down from his hairline, she raises her hand to him a second time. And there it hovers, like a warning.

“Touch him again, and I will personally remove the limb responsible.”

“Y-yes, Lord Ren,” he chokes, still winded.

“Or, perhaps, I should carve out your eyes,” she muses aloud, “Since you seem only to look upon him with disdain.”

“N-No, Lord Ren!”

She scowls down at him in disgust. “Get out of my sight.” Panicked and confused, he scrambles to his feet and disappears. The expression on her Techie’s face is somewhere between worshipful and horrified. She kneels down behind him, slipping her arms up beneath his, and he tenses up instinctively. But, after a moment, he allows himself to relax into the heavy warmth of her. Somehow, he knows in his heart that she won’t ever hurt him.

He reaches up to clutch at her arm with a shaking hand. “Th-thank you.”

“ _Dhasias drida_ ,” she croons, lips brushing along the shell of his ear, “Do you see, now, that I keep my promises?”

He presses his eyes shut, squeezing her arm. “Yes.” It’s late at night, but he’s still distantly worried that someone will witness this; maybe the General, again, or the Supreme Leader himself. Kylo might kill them both, if he saw her holding him like this. But, just like in the lift, he doesn’t want it to stop.

She’s so beautiful. So frightening.

“I have you, now,” she reassures, pressing a kiss to the soft skin of his neck, just below his ear. “No one will dare harm you again.”

He turns to look at her, his expression so open and earnest. He hates the sound of his eyes refocusing on her face, her lips. With a gentle finger, she drags some of the rust from beneath his eye, and he can’t help but lift a finger to her face, too, hovering just above the red paint. And then she’s pressing a kiss to the corner of his mouth, and a little whimper of shock rises from his throat.

It’s over before he has time to react to it, and he gazes up at her with complete, unabashed desperation on his face. His pupils expand and contract a few times in quick succession, sounding almost like a camera shutter. She can’t help but smile as she realizes he’d done the exact same thing last time. An endearing sign of his excitement, perhaps.

“ _Dhasias drida_ ,” she repeats, laying her lips against his once more.

This time he’s ready for it, and he leans in so gratefully, quivering in her arms. And then she’s gone.


	18. Chapter 18

Kylo slams the severed head of the Ovissian onto the conference table. “We have a spy in our ranks.”

The ripple of fear that travels through the High Council is palpable. From her silent vigil in the corner of the room, Annihila watches. She’s employed the full force of her Shadow Magic today, in order to attain true invisibility. She loves to sit in and watch these meetings, entirely unbeknownst to the Council, while Kylo snarls and seethes, bringing them to their knees before him. It gives an extra set of eyes, another perspective. She sees all the things he misses.

And he is beautiful, this way. No matter how angry she is with him (and she _very much still is_ ), even her fury cannot mar his perfect beauty.

He strides around to stand at the head of the table, moving like a furious predator. “He just sent a message to the Resistance. Whoever this traitor is, it won’t stop us. From what I’ve seen on Exegol, the First Order is about to become a true empire.”

The sound of Hux’s thoughts momentarily draws her attention.

_Of course, there’s a kriffing spy. Probably Pryde, that conniving ass-kisser._

It piques her interest. He’s glaring across the table at the Allegiant General, and the hatred in his ice-chip eyes serves as a reminder of why she was so drawn to him in the first place. But he looks so small, now, without his greatcoat, and all of his gleaming, silver rank. It tears at her heart. At one time, he had been the most powerful being in the Galaxy. And now, fallen from grace. Torn from it, more accurately, by Kylo Ren.

Slowly, Annihila begins to pace, her footfalls silent and undetected as she moves around the table. She needs no Magick for that.

Hux suddenly blinks, glancing around the room. He can’t see her, of course, but somehow he knows she’s here. It’s as though he can sense her in the air. Whether her presence is a comfort or a disturbance to him, he hasn’t yet decided.

All at once, Kylo rounds on him, too. “I sense… Unease about my appearance, General Hux.”

It’s a moment before he responds. “About the mask?” he asks, back straight and confident, “No, sir. Well done.”

Beside him, General Arnold feels the need to chime in. “I like it.”

Annihila can all but feel Hux cringe into his seat, the leather of his gloves creaking as his hands ball into fists on the tabletop.

One of the Colonels presumes to speak up, then. Aloof, impatient, and doubtful. “Forgive me, sir, but these allies from Exegol… They sound like a _cult_. Conjurers and soothsayers.” He spits the words like so much venom.

Annihila does not like his tone, and she does not like his references. But Pryde jumps in, before she can decide how to adequately punish the man.

“They’ve _conjured_ legions of Star Destroyers,” he snaps, “The Sith fleet will increase our resources ten thousand-fold.” He turns to Hux, then. “Such rage and power will correct the error of Starkiller Base.”

For reasons she does not fully understand, Annihila’s hands tighten into fists. For a moment, she’s filled with a strange, unfamiliar urge to protect him; as though he were a sad and wounded thing, left out in the rain.

She can feel Kylo’s attention turn to her in mild surprise, but she pays him no mind. Instead, she bends down over Hux’s shoulder, so close that he can feel the warmth of her breath against his ear. He starts, and then freezes. Like a cornered animal.

_You’re quite right_ , _Armitage_ , she tells him, _he is a conniving ass-kisser._

Hux’s brow furrows, but his gaze does not waver. His gloved hands remain laced tightly together on the tabletop. _Yes_ , she hears him decide, _a_ _comfort_. Whether he meant for her to hear it or not is difficult to determine.

It makes her smile.

“We’ll need to increase recruitments,” the Colonel continues, “And harvest more of the Galaxy’s young. This fleet: what is it, a gift? And what does Sidious ask for in return? This is to say nothing of the _alien_ _witch_ —”

Darth Annihila has heard enough. Hux’s hair flutters as she thrusts a hand out over his shoulder, and the Colonel can only claw at his throat for a moment before she’s lifted him from his chair and slammed him into the ceiling. The entire table jumps in collective shock, save for Hux. She peers over his shoulder to watch his face. He looks at the dying Colonel for only a moment, before fixing his gaze once again on Pryde. He’s watching the subtle signs of terror appear on the man’s face, delighting in them. He’s smiling. It makes her smile, too.

Annihila holds the Colonel in place while he chokes and gasps. His panic is delicious. She drinks deeply from it, relishing the taste. It isn’t long before the Colonel goes limp, at which point she releases him with no ceremony. His body falls heavily to the table, where he remains like a kind of macabre warning. The assembled council members bow their heads, cowed into silence as their hands shake atop the table. But she’s not through, yet.

_Shall I do Pryde, next?_ she asks Hux.

He scoffs quietly. _Ren, no._

“Allegiant General Pryde,” she says softly, and the entire table tenses at the unexpected sound of her voice.

_!! Ren !!_ Hux scolds.

Her face twitches with a cruel smile. “I sense you’ve something else to add.”

Pryde doesn’t know where to look as he replies. “No, Lord Ren,” he says, in a tone that is, somehow, both subservient and baffled. Like he’s hurt that she feels the need to ask.

After a tense beat, she commands, “All of you, get out.”

The council rises with no lack of urgency, and files from the room. She stands back to let Hux by, reaching out to ghost a fingertip along his cheek as he does. His lips twitch with the threat of a smile, even as he swats her away. She could swear she even hears him mutter a quick, exasperated, “Ren…”

As soon as the door is sealed behind them, Annihila appears, opulently dressed and unmasked. Kylo removes his helmet, and she can see the proud smirk on his face.

“I’d been looking forward to doing that myself,” he scolds lightly.

“I won’t have our methods questioned by the likes of _that_ ,” she spits, gesturing dismissively towards the body on the table.

“What do you make of all of this?” he asks, turning to gaze out of the wide viewport. For the first time, their entire fleet is assembled, and even she cannot deny: it is glorious.

She steps up by his side to admire the view, hands clasped behind her back. “You’re right to believe that a single spy, no matter how well-informed, will be inconsequential in the end. There isn’t a force in the Galaxy with the strength to hold against the sheer power of these combined fleets.”

He nods, thinking carefully.

“Nevertheless, such disobedience cannot go unpunished,” she concedes, “There’s a very short list of people who have access to the kind of information being fed to the Resistance. Most of them just walked out of this room.”

“That could prove to be a complication,” he heeds, uncharacteristically.

“You worry too much, beloved,” she dismisses, “I’ll begin interrogations at once.”

“And if none of them confess?”

“Then I’ll kill every single man and woman on this ship, one by one, until the leaks stop.”

Despite himself, he cannot help but be impressed. He snarls appreciatively, leaning in to drag his teeth along the skin below her ear, as if in thanks. It frustrates her, but she allows it. For no other reason than to keep things on an even keel.

“Why did you question Pryde?” he asks, placing a hand on her cheek and nosing at the shell of her ear.

“That… _Remark_ he made to Armitage,” she says, “About Starkiller.”

She feels a pinprick of jealousy in Kylo at the statement, but he does not stop his gentle ministrations yet.

“He thinks Pryde is the spy.”

Kylo snarls, finally withdrawing. He gazes out of the viewport, hands clenching into fists as he seethes, “I don’t care what he thinks.”

“You shouldn’t have demoted him.”

“Why?” he asks, and she can hear the anger beginning to boil up in his voice. _Because you love him?_

“No,” she negates aloud, “Because men like Armitage Hux are useful. Men consumed with ambition, fueled by spite. Men who know when they must set aside their pride, and swallow the burning shame inside them. Beaten pups often grow to be vicious creatures. You and I are much the same way.”

He scoffs at that, but cannot deny the truth in her words.

“But, like you and I, Hux will never forget where he came from. And he does not forgive.”

“You seem to have given him a great deal of thought,” he remarks, making no effort to mask his contempt.

She pays no mind to the emotional outburst building in her lover, and soldiers on. She has an important point to make, and she will be heard. Not that it worked, last time. “He’s a rabid cur, whose hatred of you continues to grow. The best place for him is at the end of our leash. And we have him there, for now. But if you keep kicking at him like this, he’ll chew through that leash and bury his teeth in your neck.”

“His hatred of me,” he repeats, and she can tell he’s paid no attention to the rest, “Because I have what he wants.” He turns to look her up and down. “ _Everything_ he wants.”

His fixation on this element baffles her. If he wants to throw a jealous little tantrum about her former flames, then the single evening she spent with Armitage Hux should be the least of his concern. If only he knew about the Chiss.

“It’s nothing so superficial as that,” she insists. “He—”

Kylo holds up a hand. “I don’t want to hear another word about _General_ Hux,” he snaps. With that, he picks up his helmet and strides for the door. “I’m taking the Knights. We’re going to hunt down the scavenger, once and for all.”

“Don’t you walk away from me!” she snaps, indignant.

The air warps and ripples. “You do not give me orders.”

She’s across the room in an instant, with all the quiet speed possessed by her race and sex. “Kylo,” she says, catching him by the wrist, “All I’ve ever wanted for is our victory. After everything I’ve done for us, would you think so little of me?”

He turns, ready to argue, but when he sees the look on her face, he softens at once. _Devoted_ , he thinks. _As I am to her_. He slips a hand around the back of her neck, drawing her up into a kiss.

_I was acting like a child_.

“I know,” she murmurs against his lips, “It’s alright.”

“I’ll return as quickly as I can,” he reassures her, dragging his nose along hers, “ _Pur’nuin’i_.”

“No,” she says impulsively, “I’m coming with you.” To keep an eye on you.

For a moment, she senses something akin to anger flare up in his chest. She leans back to look him in the eye, and then realizes it wasn’t anger at all. He’s smiling, gaze traveling ravenously across her face. His heart beats wildly for her, as he wraps a hand around the back of her neck, and presses their foreheads together. She’s hit by a barrage of images: the two of them, side by side, illuminated by the red glow of their blades. They fight through forests and across deserts, moving as one. A dance of death and victory. Order brought to chaos. She feels the thrill in him at the thought.

“It’ll be just like old times,” she says, in a tone that’s nearly playful, “The Knights of Ren, reunited at last.”

“You’re not a Knight of Ren, anymore,” he reminds her.

“No,” she concedes, “But neither are you.”

* * *

“Stop!” Annihila commands, catching Kylo by the wrist as he attempts to storm from his quarters, “Where do you think you’re going?”

He wrenches his arm from her grip. “Away from you!” He immediately regrets the remark, grimacing in anticipation of her reaction.

“ _Me_?” she demands, and he can feel the flames licking up around his edges, “How _dare_ you! While you were playing with your food, chasing that scavenger back and forth across the desert, I was _thinking_! I was working to lay a _trap_!”

“Because you anticipated my failure!”

“Yes!” she shouts, unashamed of it, “I’ve come to anticipate _nothing_ but failure from you!”

He opens his mouth as if to argue, and the air warps around her as he raises a hand towards her throat.

“Ah, ah, ah!” Her hand flies to her hip, hovering like a threat over the hilt of her saber.

For a moment, they are locked in a smoldering, dead heat. And then she cocks an eyebrow, expectantly.

“Are you going to try and kill me, Kylo?” Her tone is venomous. Patronizing.

He wavers, eyes flitting across her face. _No_.

After a pause, he snarls, turning away. “They won’t come for the prisoner, it’s—”

“They will,” she insists, “They have done so, time and time again! What—”

He roars, eyes upturned as he shouts, “But _she_ won’t! _She_ won’t come! I can feel it!”

Something about the quality of his voice stops Annihila in her tracks. She lashes out, carving into only the most superficial of his thoughts. Quick and violent. He flinches as though she’s slapped him across the face. For an instant, she sees him laid plain. _It’s right there_ , she realizes, _just sitting on the surface, now_.

“You’re not even trying to hide her from me anymore,” she whispers, a pang of dread spreading through her stomach.

At that, he turns away. “Get out of my head.”

“Kylo,” she sternly impresses, “You’re meant to be _killing_ her!”

He whips back around, furious. “When did you begin obeying orders from Darth Sidious? You—” he stammers, “You want him _destroyed_! What does it matter, if I leave her—”

“Not his orders!” she argues, “ _My_ orders! You’ll do it because _I_ say you will!”

He throws his head back, palms upturned and imploring, “And I will!” he shouts in desperation, “My love, I _will_!”

In the flicker of time between heartbeats, her lightsaber is suddenly thrust beneath his chin. “Don’t lie to me.”

His hands ball into fists, eyes pressed shut in mounting frustration.

“I have grown so weary of this,” she seethes, as deadly as he’s ever heard her, “I’m sick of waiting around for you to decide that this is what you want, that _I_ am what you want! I’ve done everything I can for you, I’ve laid the path out at your feet! Removed _every_ obstacle!”

His fingernails are carving into his palms, he can feel the blood beginning to drip through his fists. He doesn’t like the heat of her weapon so close to his face.

“In point of fact, my love, I simply do not trust you,” she reveals, in a voice like smoldering embers, “Not while she lives. You _know_ what you must do. And you’ll follow your orders, or I’ll put a swift end to the short reign of Kylo Re—”

She sees a flash of his black robe, and her vision goes momentarily red. Her feet leave the ground. And the next thing she feels is her spine folding over the edge of the table behind her. The saber falls from her hand, and clatters to the floor. She’s gasping, seeing stars. And when she’s finally able to blink away the shock, Kylo is gone.

A trickle of blood runs down from her nose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ooh, they're starting to wear on each other. Maybe they do have different agendas, after all.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mitaka is Literally Just Doing His Best

Dopheld Mitaka cannot believe his luck. At this point, he’s fairly certain that the General is trying to kill him, but wants to avoid filling out all of the paperwork associated with pushing an officer out of an open airlock. First, he saddled him with the unfortunate task of delivering all of his ill news to Kylo Ren, and now… This. He has sent him to fetch _her_.

A shiver runs up his spine.

With shaking fingers, he reaches for her door control. But before he can ring, it opens of its own accord.

_Not a good sign_.

He takes a deep, stilling breath, and steps inside. What he sees makes his anxiety skyrocket. It looks as though a hand grenade has gone off in the room. Screens and control panels pop and spark, crisscrossed with the melted, smoldering scars from her lightsabers. After so many years with Kylo Ren, he knows the marks well. The walls have been similarly carved upon, and entire chunks of insulation seem to have been pried away and destroyed. There isn’t a single stick of furniture left intact, and most of it is, _somehow_ , on fire. She’s even managed to put a crack in her viewport, which terrifies him most of all.

And she’s there, right in the middle of it: perched eerily atop the rubble, with her back to the door. Her cybernetic feet are tucked neatly beneath her, and she balances atop what seems to be a broken table leg. It’s sticking straight up from the ground, propped up by… _Nothing_. The impossible physics of it trigger a visceral, panicked reaction in him.

“S-s-sir,” he stammers, shaking hands clasped behind his back.

She does not answer.

“S-sir?”

Still no response. Maybe ‘sir’ is wrong.

“M-my Lord?” he guesses.

With that, her head finally turns. He doesn’t even register her movement. One moment, she’s looking away, and the next, he can see a single, gleaming silver eye, peering out at him from behind her curtain of waist-length hair. Mitaka takes a defensive, half-step back, eyes downturned.

He takes another guess. “M-m-my… _Lady_?”

“What?” she snaps, impatient.

“General Hux requests your presence, m-my… Your Excellency?”

He watches, horrified, as she rises. Still somehow balanced on that narrow precipice, she straightens her legs to tower over him, wraithlike. Her arms fold together behind her back, and she tilts her head side to side, cracking her neck.

He takes another step back. “S-sir?”

“You may inform your General that I’ll be along shortly, Dopheld,” she interrupts, voice disarmingly serene, “And tell my Knights to assemble and await my command.”

Hux waits by the wide viewport in his ready room, humming with anticipation. It seems to him that he’s been waiting far too long for Mitaka to retrieve Ap’lek. He wonders, briefly, if she killed him. He grimaces, pinching at the bridge of his nose. Imagining the mountain of paperwork that an incident like that would surely entail threatens to give him a headache. So, he straightens up, and fixes his gaze on one of the furthest, faintest stars he can see. He tries to calculate which direction he’s facing, and thereby identify which system it might be.

You could never see the stars, from the surface of Arkanis.

The air behind him bends and ripples, giving only a split-second warning. She opens the door without ringing, and the distinctive clicking of her footsteps approaches. He notices, briefly, that the bridge has fallen entirely silent in her wake. He rolls his eyes. _You would think that, after all this time, they’d be used to her._ And then the door slides shut, and they’re alone.

“Where is your dog?” he pointedly asks, still staring out at his star.

She does not answer.

“You were sent here to keep him under control,” he snaps, “And yet, _somehow_ , you have allowed it to come to this.”

Again, silence. Nothing so much as the shift of her cloak.

He grimaces, hands balling into fists behind his back. “Are you listening to me, Ren?” he snaps, rounding on her, “I asked you—”

The words catch in his throat as he lays eyes on her. At once, he understands the eerie silence on the bridge.

She’s not wearing her mask. And yet, somehow, the view of her face seems to inspire more fear and awe that that false visage ever had. He notices that she has that red color smeared beneath her eyes again, like the night they’d…

_Stop it._

The hair nearest to her face has been tied back, and the rest hangs freely to her waist. She’s clad in a gleaming, fitted breastplate, and the pale, bony peaks of her shoulders are visible through cutouts in her wraithlike cloak. Some manner of dark wrappings span from her upper arms, down to her knuckles, and a wide collar of black mesh sits in place of her cowl; it rises to veil the lower half of her face like a cage. _Like a muzzle_ , he thinks strangely.

He furrows his brow as he takes in the sight of her, and she can sense his awe. It does little more than exasperate her. She had come here hoping for a nice, loud, violent argument, not this quiet, fawning nonsense. _Human men, of all the useless.._.

“I do not know where Kylo is,” she finally announces, “And I sense that he has begun to yield to the Light.”

Hux is taken aback. He blinks at her in numb shock. “Well… _Stop_ him!”

She scowls. He says it as though the solution is obvious. He says it as though the solution is _easy_. “I _am_ ,” she seethes, cold and dangerous.

“No, you’re not!” he spits, “You’re standing around, wasting space in my ready room! _Do_ something, god damn you! Get in your kriffing ship, and fly around in circles until you can…” he stammers, beginning to pace back and forth, “I don’t know, _hear him in your head_! Or however the hell it is you damnable creatures function, I don’t know! I don’t _care_! This is _your_ _job_!”

A momentary burst of searing heat seems to emanate from her all at once, moving silently through the air like the percussion from a bomb. “You’ll govern your tongue more carefully, in my presence!” she snaps, thrusting a finger towards him, “Do _not_ forget to whom you speak!”

Hux snarls, throwing his hands up in frustration. He stomps across the room to the long conference table, flinging himself into a random chair with an uncharacteristic lack of composure. He rubs at his temples, face screwed up in thought. It feels like he’s fraying at the edges, the scope of his carefully measured control rapidly narrowing before his eyes.

With a furious sneer, Annihila takes up his vigil at the viewport, scoffing down at him as she glides past. She fixes her gaze on a faraway star, and tries to regulate her breathing. She focuses on the waxing and waning tightness of her breastplate as her ribs expand and contract beneath it. The armor seems so suddenly stifling. The feeling is, at least, marginally grounding.

She needs to think. She needs to try to anticipate what will happen, as far into the future as possible, and plan for every potential eventuality. It’s what she _should_ be doing. But a deafening roar of disrespectful, red noise is bursting at the seams of her companion’s mind, pouring from him in unregulated waves.

She groans in frustration. “Hux, shut _up_!” she snaps, whipping around to glare at him.

The outburst startles him. He’s suddenly flustered; overwhelmed and indignant. He stumbles over multiple words at once, finally mumbling, “ _You…_ Shut up.” The sheer, unexpected stupidity of the remark makes his face burn with humiliation.

After a tense beat of silence, she exhales a monosyllabic laugh. It had sounded so completely ridiculous, in his clipped, Imperial accent.

His face reddens further, and he doubles down. “Shut up.”

She turns back to the viewport, half-smiling, and shaking her head in disbelief.

They’re quiet for a long time, locked in the dead heat of their manufactured conflict. Behind her, Hux digs through his pocket for his cigarette case and lighter. No sooner has he slipped one between his lips, then it has lit itself. At this point, it should no longer surprise him. But in this moment, amidst all the fury and vitriol peppering the space between them, he is taken aback by the gesture. He looks up, studying her in silence. She’s gazing through the viewport with a stern rictus, her strong jaw set firmly, chin held high. Regal and defiant, even now.

Annihila takes a deep, stilling breath before she speaks, still focused on her faraway star. “In point of fact, Armitage, I believe that our mutual friend is headed for Exegol,” she says calmly, “It is the only place he could hope to find victory, now.”

He cocks an eyebrow, taking a drag from his cigarette.

“As we speak, the Knights of Ren are assembling. They are under my command, now. We will meet Kylo in the Citadel of Sith, and if he does not yield, we will destroy him.”

The General blinks up at her, quietly impressed. At once, he feels a pang of shame, for all of the venom and accusation he’d hurled in her direction. _A knee-jerk reaction_ , he realizes. _I should’ve trusted her_. _She has never failed us, before._

“I can have us in the quadrant within the hour,” he says. A gentle apology.

She nods briskly, still gazing out of the viewport. “Thank you.”

“Look at me,” he impulsively commands.

She turns placidly, gaze flitting across his face. Searching.

He would hold her, now, if he had his way. More than that, he guiltily realizes. He’d lock the door, throw her up onto the table, and show her how sorry he is for the way he’d spoken to her. _It might do us both some good,_ he muses sardonically.

No, he decides. It was a bad idea the first time, and it’ll only be a worse one, now. Defeated, he crushes his cigarette into an ashtray on the table.

He closes his eyes, rubs at his forehead. With a subtle nod towards the chair beside him, he beckons to her. “Sit down.”

She studies him in silence for a moment, as if measuring out the worth of him. And then, to his great shock, she steps away from the viewport. Gracefully, placing one foot directly in front of the other, she closes the space between them. He starts in surprise when he feels her hands on his shoulders, and then she’s sliding into his lap, pressing her chest to his, laying her head on his shoulder. Her cloak drapes over them like nightfall.

He stammers, hands hovering awkwardly above her form. “Ren,” he finally manages, and the false title feels like a splinter in her mind, “This is not what I had in mind, when I said—”

She interrupts, “Yes, it is.”

He sighs in resignation, finally laying a hand against her back. “Dammit,” he hisses, straining and reaching for the datapad on the far side of the table. After a moment, it slides across the tabletop of its own accord, directly into his outstretched hand. “Thank you,” he mumbles, slightly chagrined.

She whispers something in reply, but it’s muffled into his neck.

He slips his arms beneath hers, peering down over her shoulder at the datapad. It’s an awkward position, but he won’t have to hold it for long. All he has to do is notify the ensign of the course change, and get them underway to Exegol. After a minute or so, the stars outside begin to shift. Satisfied, he sets the datapad back down, and returns his attention to the situation at hand.

“Ren,” he nudges, laying his hands on her back again. He’s not quite sure what they’re doing. Not that he isn’t enjoying it, he just doesn’t know how to handle the uncertainty.

She mumbles something indistinct, her words vibrating through his skin.

“I can’t read your mind,” he gently admonishes, “You’ll have to speak up.”

She shifts slightly, and asks, “Why did you come to see me in the medbay?”

His heart leaps into his throat. _Ah_ , he realizes. _That’s what we’re doing._ He grapples with dozens of reasons to give her, but all of them ring false. Finally, he settles on, “Professional courtesy.”

She exhales a hollow laugh. “And this?”

He can think of no answer to give her. After a beat, he feels her fingers slip around the back of his neck, and curl through his hair.

“Look at me,” he softly commands, lifting her face away from his shoulder. There’s a quality to her gaze that he’s never seen before, something he can’t quite identify. Vulnerability, perhaps. Something guardedly fragile. He moves to rest a hand on her cheek, and then pauses.

She blinks slowly, watching him through heavily lidded eyes. And then she reaches out, slips the glove from his hand. Freeing him. He has to choke back the gasp threatening to edge from his throat.

Delicately, he rolls the black mesh away from her face. Freeing her. He brushes the backs of his fingers so indulgently up her tattooed cheek. Her eyes flutter and fall shut. She leans into his touch, lips parted just slightly as though she were grappling with something to say. But it never comes.

Someone rings at the door.

In the blink of an eye, the frank, self-evident expression on Hux’s face melts away, replaced by his characteristic sneer.

“What?” he demands, looking to the speaker beside the door.

It’s Mitaka. “ _Sirs, the, ah… The Knights of Ren are on the bridge_.”

Annihila’s forehead falls forward against his shoulder. “Those ghouls,” she mutters, and he can feel the frustration ebbing from her. “Overzealous as all—”

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Hux dismisses.

“ _But sirs, what do I—?”_

“That’ll be all, Lieutenant!” he snaps.

Without another word spoken, Annihila rises gracefully from his lap, and he suddenly feels very cold. They cross the room in silence, each mourning the end of that rare moment of quiet comfort.

It was, perhaps, entirely unique in both of their lives.

They reach the door, and Hux hastily straightens his uniform. She reaches for the control panel, but he catches her by the wrist.

“’Lek,” he says softly.

Though the name stings to hear, she cannot bring herself to correct him. Not now. She looks to her companion, sees how close his eyes are to hers, and for a moment, she’s certain that he’s about to kiss her. His hand moves for her cheek again, the warmth of it hovering over her skin as his gaze flits down to her lips. And then he lifts the veil back over her face.

“Thank you,” she murmurs, handing him his glove back. Ignoring the feeling like her chest is caving in.

He gives her a brisk nod, and opens the door.

Her Knights are waiting for her, as they stride out onto the bridge. All is quiet, as the assembled staff watch with bated breath. _Good_ , she thinks. _I want everyone to hear this. I want rumors to spread._

The Knights of Ren all drop to one knee, heads respectfully bowed.

“My Lord,” Vicrul says, “We await your command.”

The General’s brow furrows, ears pricking up. _Lord_?

Annihila draws herself up to her full height, eyes traveling hungrily across her compatriots. “My loyal Knights,” she begins, “My beautiful friends. Kylo has betrayed us.”

A ripple of frantic whispers moves through the bridge crew of the _Steadfast,_ she can sense the panic and confusion beginning to build. The General silences them with a stern glance.

“We go, now, to the Citadel of Sith,” she continues, “He will join us, or he will die.”

Vicrul looks up, raises a hand towards her. “We will follow you to the end, Darth Annihila.”

As she places her hand in his, allowing him to lay it against the forehead of his helmet, she looks to Hux. His brow is heavy, cold eyes narrowing with dawning comprehension.

_A Sith, my god, a Sith._

The ship is folding in around him, tightening into a deadly, claustrophobic trap. The air is suddenly thick and heavy, fighting him as he tries to breathe. His heart hammers with panic, mouth opening and closing in dumb silence.

The Knights of Ren rise, making way for their Lord. Head held high, she leads them back down the bridge, leaving the stunned General in their wake.

Just as they reach the door, Mitaka comes sprinting in past them. “General!”

Annihila pauses, turning to watch the proceedings with mild interest.

“General,” he pants, “We’ve apprehended four rebel spies, trying to free the prisoner. FN-2187 is among them.”

Hux nods briskly, snapping to a smart attention. “Very well, Mitaka. I’ll see to it myself.”

And then she hears the strangest thing.

_Dammit all, must I be expected to do everything around here?_

It’s coming from Hux.

_I swear, I have become the_ backbone _of this Resistance._

Despite herself, Annihila’s fingertips flash with momentary flame.

As if realizing his mistake, the General suddenly looks up. His eyes meet hers, and a bolt of panic runs through his chest.

_Please_ , he silently begs. _Trust me when I say that I did it for us._

She cocks her head to the side. _There’s an ‘us’, now, is there?_

Kuruk places a hand on her arm. “My Lord,” he urges, “The _Night Buzzard_ awaits.”

With one final look into the eyes of Armitage Hux, Darth Annihila turns away, and sets off on her march to war.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aww.


	20. Chapter 20

Annihila peers down over the edge of the chasm, watching as Ushar falls. “Those were our friends,” she says, and the calmness in her voice fills Ben’s stomach with dread.

He nods. “They were.”

“So,” she begins serenely, drawing her sabers, “It has come to this.”

“Walk away,” he softly commands.

Her eyes crackle with fury. “No.”

“I won’t fight you,” he says, retracting the blade of his saber and casting it away.

It shocks her. “You’re a coward,” she spits, knowing it’s a hurtful lie, “Snoke was right, you’re just an angry child with a lightsaber!”

“Go home, _pur’nuin’i_ ,” he implores.

Tiny flames begin to lick up from the bare stone around her feet. “ _What_?”

“Go back to Dathomir. You can lay a claim to the matriarchy, restore the Nightsisters. You’ll—”

The remark sparks her anger. “I don’t want to rule _Dathomir_!” she spits, “I want to rule the _Galaxy_!” All the muscles in her chest and arms strain as she screams, “ _I WANT WHAT I WAS PROMISED_!” The fire around her flares up momentarily, and then recedes. Her words echo in the silence, filling the dead heat between them.

His expression saddens immensely. “I can’t give you that.”

“No, the truth is that you _won’t_!” she argues, “You’ve been poisoned by fear and weakness! Do you not see, Kylo? _We_ were the prophesized dyad, I’ve read the signs myself! _I_ was destined to rule by your side, and I’ll not yield, now, to some lowly scavenger!”

“She’s the descendant of—”

“I _know_ who she is!” Annihila roars, annoyed by his inane interruption, “I’ve known it all along! And I refuse to bow to the supremacy of your sacred bloodline for one more second! Because I have had to fight, my entire life, for only the faintest _taste_ of the power that was handed to you.”

He meets her gaze head-on, imploring. “Please—”

“I came from _nothing_! From swamp and bare rock, I clawed my way through trial after trial until I reached the Citadel of Sith!” She thrusts one of her sabers high, voice echoing through the pyramid. “I’ve endured suffering that you will never know, I—” She throws her head back and growls, an unhinged, feral sound. Again, the flames rise from her feet, as her voice rises to a terrifying, fever pitch. “I BURNED MY LEGS AWAY! And for what?”

_“Pur’nuin’i…”_

“FOR WHAT? To be your prop? To kneel before you so you can step on my back as you rise? _I’ll kneel no longer_!”

Her chest is heaving with exertion, eyes glistening with sadness and anger. Ben can see her shaking, her thumbs resting on the switches of her sabers, spiking his anxiety. She senses his fear, and drinks deeply from it. The sweetness of his agony is intoxicating.

“I know, now, that power cannot be given,” she snarls, “It can only be claimed. Power belongs to the conquerors, to those with the will to reach out and take it!”

Her words are like a blade twisting through his insides. For all of her anger, all of her fury, he can think of no denial to offer. All this time, she has been but a pawn. Sidious raised her like a lamb for slaughter, and if he could give her justice for it, he would. But he can see, now, that her heart has been claimed by Shadow.

Ben Solo looks across the cavern and, for a moment, the Sith Lord Darth Annihila fades away entirely. Standing before him is the skinny, wild-maned girl he came to love on Yavin-4. He pierces past this frenzy of red hatred and black desire that has consumed her, and he sees his childhood sparring companion: the knees of her leg wrappings scuffed through, wielding a pair of wooden sticks as she launches herself towards him. They inflicted such innocent wounds upon one another in those days, laughing all the while. He sees the girl that would wake him in the dead of night and drag him to the edge of the forest, where he would listen to her name the stars until they fell asleep in the grass. He sees the dew glittering on her face in the morning light of that white sun, as it crests over the Yunteh Peaks.

His heart breaks for her. It’s splitting his chest in two, rending and prying his ribcage apart. Catching his throat on fire. The thought occurs to him for the first time: his lover, his equal, this woman who is his opposite half in all things may have fallen beyond his reach.

He extends a hand towards her. “Please,” he murmurs, “Nul.” The long-forgotten name slips from his tongue on no more than a whisper. A final, desperate plea.

It fails.

Darth Annihila activates the blades of her sabers, illuminated by their red and furious glow. Like the sun that grew her. “If you’re not with me,” she heeds, “Then you’re my enemy.”

“I’m not your enemy,” he implores, “We don’t have to be enemies.”

“You said, once, that you’d never be able to take the Throne without me.” She settles into her footing, reversing the grip on her left blade to hold it up like a shield. “But I can take it without you.”

The distance between them closes in the blink of an eye. He pulls the saber back into his grip, wielding it two-handed against her paired blades. By the skin of his teeth, he blocks an attack that would slice him in two. Their blades clash mere inches from his face. She bares her pointed teeth, roaring with the exertion, pressing all of her weight into it.

“Stop!” he commands, mustering all of his strength to force her away.

She stumbles backwards, resetting her grip before leaping for him again. He side-steps, which she had been banking on. She whirls around, sending her right blade on a path that would pierce into his stomach. He casts it aside, and she slips past him.

“ _Fight_ me!” she screams, lunging for him yet again.

She pairs her blades, whipping them for his face. He ducks, driving the sole of his foot into her chest. He hears the air forced from her lungs; a violent, ragged sound, and she falls to her back.

Panting, he brandishes his saber towards her. “Don’t,” he nearly begs, “Don’t.”

With a feral cry, she sprints for him again. This time, she feints left. It’s her signature move, the way she’d always pin him while they were sparring. Never in thirteen years has he learned to detect it, and this time is no different. While he swings wildly overhead, she drops, kicking his leg out from beneath him. He falls, landing hard on his back.

Time seems to slow for them both. Annihila springs back up, lunging forward to plant her foot on his chest. He buckles in pain. She crosses her blades, diving for his throat, ready to rend his head from his shoulders. For a moment, their eyes meet in the red glow. He blinks up at her, feels the weight of his opponent on his chest, and the weight of the saber in his hand. He does not have time to think. He rolls, and swings his blade through the air above him.

All at once, her weight leaves his chest. Something thumps to the ground beside him.

It takes Annihila a long moment to process what he’s done. And then she sees her severed leg lying on the ground beside her opponent. She screams in abject horror, her residual limb kicking out wildly as she struggles for balance. The ragged circuitry at the end of her leg pops and crackles, the smell of burning synthflesh and melting Cortosis filling her head with panic. Darth Annihila drops her sabers. She falls.

Ben Solo lunges forward and catches her. He slips an arm beneath her back as he rises into a crouch, draping her gently over his bent knee. He has tears streaming down his cheeks. She gazes up into his dark eyes, gasping in numb disbelief.

“M-my leg…” She reaches down blindly, grasping at the empty space. “My leg, B-Ben, what did you…?”

He swallows hard. “Does it hurt?”

“No,” she murmurs weakly. She reaches up, dips her fingertips into his tears. They cling to his cheeks like morning dew. “No.”

His voice hitches as he weeps. “I’m sorry.”

“I love you,” she pleads.

 _I’ll kill you_ , she thinks.

“Nul,” he whispers again.

He watches her face harden, feels the danger ebbing from her chest. Her desire to destroy him, permanently intertwined with her passion.

“I love you,” she insists, reaching weakly for the weapon, “I love you more than she ever will, I’ll—”

“Stop,” he sobs, lifting it out of her reach.

“I love you.”

Something changes in his face, only for a split second. In his arms, he sees the warrior who had to be crushed between two speeders before she stopped fighting. He sees her for the vicious, untamable thing that she is. _Devsta’rak’i_. And in this moment, he sees that she has chosen her own fate.

Ben Solo closes his eyes. The blade of his saber hums to life, casting an eerie, blue light across his face.

“I love you,” she gasps, watching as he reverses his grip on the lightsaber, drawing it high above her chest like a dagger.

He nods. “I know.”

Then, with painful, deliberate slowness, he sinks the tip of his blade into the space above her navel. Boring through her armor. Her eyes fly wide with disbelief, mouth frozen open in a silent scream. Now, it’s not burning circuitry that she can smell, but her own flesh. Her own muscle and bone.

He’s screaming. Or maybe she is. There’s pain, but not nearly enough, she thinks. And then she realizes why. Her lover, her equal, her opposite half has joined her for one final communion. Not red, not angry, but heavy with regret. Searing, suffocating remorse. He’s punishing himself, taking half of the pain as his own. With her to the last.

Annihila chokes on a painful, shuddering breath when he withdraws his blade. Her back collides with the smooth stone of the cavern floor, and she feels him slipping away.

He deliberately missed her heart. For all of his rage, all of his passion and obsession, he cannot bring himself to destroy that wild, beautiful heart. He cannot watch her die.

“I hate you,” she gasps raggedly, blackness creeping at the corners of her vision as she heaves herself over onto her side. “I hate you!”

He does not answer her. Not then, and never again. His footsteps recede into the distance; he’s headed for the throne room. She presses her ear to the ground until she can hear him no more.

Outside, the harsh wind of Exegol whips and beats at the pyramid. Somewhere, rock shifts in the cavern. Stars wheel overhead, and lifetimes away, suns flicker and burn out.

She knows who she wants, now. She knows who she would be with, as she leaves this plane. Vision beginning to fail, she extends her hand blindly through the dark.

Miles above, Armitage Hux is dying, too. He’s managed to drag himself, crippled leg and blaster wound be damned, down the corridor to his own quarters. No one had paid him any mind as he did it. Storm Troopers had parted around his broken form like a stream over a rock. They, like he did, assumed he would soon fade away of his own accord. And now, he slumps against the corner of his nightstand, one arm cast uselessly across his wounded chest as he struggles to light one final cigarette.

“ _Armitage_.”

He blinks, unsure if he’s imagined it or not. It is, he fears, a symptom of the desperate spasming of his dying brain. But then he feels her: those light fingertips tracing up the back of his neck, the warmth of her blooming within his mind. His cigarette is suddenly burning of its own accord. He can only smile as he casts his lighter away.

And then he can see her: reduced to a crumpled, broken mess, deep within the heart of the Citadel of Sith. And she can see him, nursing his wounds aboard the _Steadfast_ as alarms flash and blare in the corridor. A pair of regal hedonists. Vain and beautiful. Even now, at the end of the world.

“Am I dead?” he asks in earnest. His voice is weak and strained.

“If you are,” she breathes, “Then so am I.”

He nods, taking a feeble drag of his cigarette. “You’re a Sith.”

The corner of her mouth lifts into a smile. “You’re a spy.”

He exhales a monosyllabic laugh, which triggers a coughing fit, which only intensifies his pain. A mouthful of blood spills down his chin. She can feel his agony. She tries to take some of it from him, drawing it from his chest like poison from a wound.

“And what a sorry pair we make,” he finally manages, “What happened to your leg?”

“Kylo.”

It seems to cause him physical pain. “Tell me you killed him.”

“No,” she breathes, “But I don’t think he’ll be alive for much longer.”

“Hmph.” His head rolls limply to the side, he sinks a little deeper to the floor. “Would’ve been better if you’d been the one to do it.”

“What happened to you?”

“Ahh…” He presses the heel of his hand into his eye, grimacing hard. “It doesn’t matter, I—It doesn’t matter.”

All at once, his body is wracked with labored, shuddering breaths. She can feel the tears streaming down his cheeks, as real to her as the pain and fear in his chest. Her heart breaks for him. For the both of them.

“’Lek,” he whimpers, voice hitching on his tears.

“I’m here.”

“You’re not,” he moans thickly, “You’re not.”

It takes everything she has. Annihila rolls onto her back, and her wounds punish her for it. She closes her eyes. She has to re-focus all of her energy, give his pain back to him. He screams, and the guilt of it gnaws away at her heart. The hole in her own chest seems to rend apart with searing pain, trying to distract her, but she cannot allow it to. Even now, she’s dividing; shattering and splitting apart and rising from that ruined body. Lighter and lighter, compressed between the atoms in the air. For a moment, she feels no pain at all.

And then the heaviness is back, all at once, chased by a fresh bolt of agony. Solid. The sirens flash and blare around her, and she hears Hux heave a desperate, shuddering breath. She looks up and sees him beside her, a man destroyed. Tears hang heavy from his translucent gold lashes, nearly incongruously delicate beside his eyes; cold even now, wide and red-rimmed and fearful as they are.

Clutching at the wound in her chest, wailing in pain with the effort, she crawls to him. Her severed leg waves uselessly behind her, the raw wires still popping and crackling each time she moves. Impatient, he lunges for her, taking a fistful of her collar and dragging her towards him. Together, they haul her broken form into place between his spread legs. And then, driven by impulse alone, she cranes up and presses her lips to his; those deeply pink, generous lips. She can taste his tears. Taste her own.

If he had his way, he would lie here and kiss her until he dies. _Devsta’rak’i._

But their pain has other plans. She withdraws from him with a ragged sob, clutching at her wound. He throws an arm around her shoulders, pressing her into the crook of his neck. She looks down at the hole through his lower chest. Like her own, his will not be a quick death.

“What have we done?” he shakily whispers, eyes fixed on the viewport across the room. Outside, the battle of their lifetime wages on, scarcely aware of their existence. “’Lek, what have we done?”

“Shh,” she urges, placing a shaking hand on his cheek. It leaves red streaks across his skin, her blood, and she has the strangest flash of memory: her hand whipping against his face, and the dark bruise that clung to his cheekbone for days afterwards.

Hux takes her hand, brings it to his lips. He can taste her blood. “I wish it had been different,” he murmurs, “I wish _we_ had been different. I think we could’ve been, we _could’ve_ — If—If it weren’t for—"

“Us,” she finishes. All at once, she feels it too. Like she’s been plunged into ice water, it steals the voice from her throat, tightening around her ribs until she can’t breathe. The cruel, mocking futility of mistakes made. The regret of so many things said, and so many more left unsaid.

_I need you._

_You’re perfect._

_I wish I had known you._

_I’ve loved you from the start._

“’Lek,” he gasps between panicked sobs, “We could’ve had it all, we could’ve been…”

He chokes on so many words at once.

_Allies._

_Victorious._

_Royalty._

_One._

“But we _were_ ,” she whispers breathlessly, “Can’t you see?”

His eyes flutter and fall shut as he feels her join him. She’s taken his hand, and she’s guiding him back. Swimming, struggling against the current. It’s draining her of everything she has left. He can feel the weakness spreading through her body and her mind.

He sees them in the throne room aboard the _Supremacy_ , standing over the unconscious form of Kylo Ren. Snoke lies in pieces beside his throne, the ship beginning to crumble around them. Ap’lek does not snatch for his wrist, she does not bargain for the life of her apprentice.

Instead: _“Do it.”_

She watches with pride thrumming in her chest as he raises his blaster towards his fallen rival, and squeezes the trigger.

“ _Long live the Supreme Leader_ ,” she declares, falling to her knees before him.

He takes her by the hand and pulls her to her feet. Pulls her into his kiss.

She rallies her Knights and moves on Exegol. Unhindered by her Ren helmet, that false and suppressive thing, her raven hair whips wild and free as cuts her way through the Citadel. A precision weapon. A feral thing. With a furious clench of her fist, the columns of the pyramid come crashing down, and she drives her twin blades into the heart of Darth Sidious. She is beautiful. All who remain bow to her.

She rises to the Throne of Sith in an opulent gown of black and red, ever the hedonist. He places the sinister, spiked circlet on her head. He presses kisses to her eyes.

Darth Annihila. His Sith Queen. His Empress.

Against the combined power of their fleets, the Resistance crumbles. Together, they carve a path across the Galaxy: a red scar cleaving through earth, space, and memory. They are unstoppable. They are limitless.

They still bicker, of course they do. They still strike and strike back at one another with a kind of precise, biting venom that only they possess. Winding each other into furious frenzy, as they always have. But what is leadership without challenge? Directionless, he thinks. Stagnant. Their Empire burns brightly with her defiant flames, tethered on a chain in his fist.

And then he sees it. He’s standing on the promenade of his flagship, gazing out over the largest and most powerful fleet this Galaxy has ever seen. He’s draped in a uniform of blinding white and shimmering, gold detail. A half-wreath of gilded laurels clings to his temples. He looks to the infinite, starlit expanse stretched out before him as through the eyes of a conqueror. Annihila stands beside him, a figure of awesome power and dark, terrible beauty; ready to take it with him. As he looks upon her, his chest fills with love. It is a thing both ravenous and protective; depthless and vainglorious. He smiles, because he knows that she loves him, too.

Together, they have won. Together, they will rule.

“That’s where we are, Armitage,” she whispers aloud, balling her hand into a fist on the chest of his uniform, “Stay here, with me, for a while.”

It is only then that she realizes he’s no longer holding her. His hand has fallen from her cheek, leaving it cold. She looks up to see his neck craned back limply, pale face upturned towards the hull. His wide, blue eyes stare without seeing. But on his lips, she can see the ghost of a smile.

The _Steadfast_ is falling out of the sky. Miles below, the Citadel of Sith is crumbling.


	21. Epilogue: All That Could Have Been

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All of this for you.  
> All the spoils of a wasted life.  
> All of this for you.  
> All the world has closed their eyes.  
> Tired faith all worn thin.
> 
> For all we could have done,  
> And all that could have been.

Standing on the balcony, at the very peak of the Temple of Sith, the Empress is alone. She closes her eyes, letting the wind of Exegol whip her wild hair back from her face. Her bloodied hands rest upon the dark stone of the balustrade, tight grip gradually beginning to relax. It is an uncharacteristically still night, on her planet. Eerily quiet. No lightening crackles around her, and there are even a few stars to be seen through the clouds overhead.

For that, she is grateful. She needs the stillness, now. If only for a moment.

The near-silent footsteps behind her do not startle her; she had felt her Emperor approaching for minutes. His coming to her is a welcome comfort. He is a low, golden hum that resonates behind her eyes, as much a part of her now as anything else that she is.

He takes in the sight of her for a moment, knowing that she knows he’s there. Her clothes are shredded, barely hanging onto her in some places. And she’s caked with blood and gore; none of it her own. For a moment, her mind bleeds recklessly into his. He sees the battlefield, smells the burnt ozone and bright copper, bitter upon his tongue. The screams and moans of the dying fill his head, as does the pulsing satisfaction that always seems to linger in her afterwards.

It makes him think of Crait.

“It went well, I take it?” he asks, stepping up beside her. For the first time, he sees that her face is just as bloody as the rest of her.

She nods, lacing her fingers together and leaning on the balustrade. “The survivors chose to kneel.”

Pride swells in his chest at the news of their victory. “Good,” he praises, punctuating with a brisk nod. “Good.”

“And you?” she asks, still gazing off into the distance.

“The course is charted, and the Admirals briefed,” he confirms, “We’ll be finished with the Core Systems, soon, and I anticipate that the Colonies will topple like dominos in their wake. Our spies warn that Onderon may pose a challenge, and Cato Neimoidia, but—”

“If they resist, I’ll crush them,” she interrupts, “I’ll carve your name into the surface of their worlds, forever.”

“Yes.” He smiles, pride swelling in his chest. “I know you will. The further we push, the easier they will fall. It won’t be long, now, before we can begin tightening our fist around the Rim.”

The corner of her mouth lifts to a deadly smirk, that pair of fanged teeth glinting in the low light. “Start with Jakku,” she commands, “Make an example of them.”

He smiles ruefully, delighting in the shiver that runs up his spine. After all this time, he still marvels at her dark brilliance.

Suddenly, he leans forward, craning into her field of vision. “Annihila.”

Finally, she meets his gaze. Weary, but still wild. “Armitage.”

He has always loved the way she says his name. Tongue flicking against the back of her teeth on the “r”, that distinctive, regal, Dathomirian pronunciation. All the time she’s spent with Humans, speaking almost nothing but Galactic Basic, and it still lingers in her accent.

But he can’t let it distract him now.

“Let’s go up, tonight.” He says it like a command.

“No,” she swiftly negates, turning back to her stars.

“Why not?”

She sighs in mounting frustration, combing her lank and tangled hair back from her face. “Because all I want to do right now is fuck you until I fall asleep.”

“I’ll fuck you on the ship.”

“You’ll fuck me right here,” she states definitively.

He throws his head back in frustration. “ _Ani_ ,” he nearly begs.

“I brought my Emperor a system today. Is that not enough?”

“This palace, and the infernal planet upon which it sits, set your Emperor’s teeth on edge.”

“Heart of my heart,” she sighs, rubbing at her temples, “If you want to go, then go. Kuruk and Vicrul are taking the _Buzzard_ back to the _Savage_ in a while, you can ride with them.”

He is offended by the mere _suggestion_ of being divided from her, which she had anticipated. “I’m not going up there alone. But I’m not sleeping on this godforsaken planet, either. Neither you nor I were born to be tethered to a _rock_. We belong amongst the _stars_. Together.”

“Some of us have _work_ to do.”

“Some of us have already _done_ their work.”

The look she gives him is all fire. He knows it well. “A mile beneath our feet, one thousand of your men and mine lay dying. By their blood soaked in to the earth on Bar’leth, and the limbs they left behind, we have our victory. Come dawn, half of them will be dead. I will remain here, and lend them whatever strength I can until then.”

A hot wire of shame snaps momentarily in his chest, grounding him once more. She’s right, of course she’s right, and he’s being selfish. She is an Empress, divinely appointed, and for that reason, she will never be his alone. He knows that. But he still wants to bicker with her. He snarls, turning to lean against the stone balustrade, arms crossed.

“ _Savage_ ,” he mutters, “Why you continue to name your ships after Zabrak men, I’ll never know.”

It’s a frequent point of discussion, for her Emperor, and one he seems to bring up anytime he has a want for an argument.

“Armitage, I only know the names of two Zabrak men,” she reminds him, “Both of them fierce warriors, and worth honoring. Therefore, I have two ships named for Zabrak men.” She knows exactly what he’s going to say, before he says it.

“You told me you fucked a Zabrak man, once,” he needles, “That’s three.” He’s hoping to get a rise out of her. Hoping it’ll turn her just as vicious as he likes.

She rolls her eyes. “Yes, and it is so _very_ bold of you to assume that I knew his name.”

He grimaces.

“Do you know the wonderful thing about Zabrak men, my love?” she challenges.

He knows precisely what she’s going to say, before she says it. It’s her finishing move, every time he picks this particular fight. And it feels so like a dagger to his heart, but he’ll never grow weary of the sweet, delicious pain.

“Zabrak men _behave_.”

He smiles ravenously, lunging for her and snapping his teeth centimeters from her face. “You wouldn’t have me any other way.”

For a moment, they remain trapped in a smoldering deadlock. This close, he can smell the battle on her, even in the wind. His beautiful, warrior Empress. He can see her standing on the battlefield with a pool of fire at her feet, teeth bared like the vicious, wild animal she is. He pictures her charging forth, ahead of her men, to carve through earth and metal, rending flesh from bone with her cruel blades. Ruthless. Unstoppable. All of it, for him. For _them_. It makes his blood run hot.

Her eyes flit to his lips, and then up again. She cocks an eyebrow.

And then he breaks. “Alright, I’ll fuck you right here.”

She scoffs, giving him a haughty, half-smile, before turning back to her stars. “Go inside, Armitage.”

He acquiesces without further argument.

Unable to resist, she calls over her shoulder, “Spoiled child.”

“Half-breed witch,” he retorts, disappearing into the pyramid.

There are some nights where they are perfectly balanced in all things: giving and taking from one another in equal measure. There are nights where he is her Emperor entirely, and she does as he says. But tonight is the third kind of night, where he bends to the iron will of his Sith Queen.

He knew it would be. She danced through a battlefield for him, today.

He steps into the dark opulence of their bedchamber and begins stripping his clothing away. The wide hearth along the far wall roars with her fire, casting a shaft of warmth across the room. Fastidious as ever, he tucks his clothes neatly away in the laundry chute, and then reclines on the wide, richly-covered bed to wait. He knows how she wants him. His fingers twist lazily around his length; half-hard already from their bickering on the balcony. This is their dance, the two of them. Pushing and pulling at each other, as they always have. When insomnia and memories of battle torment the Empress to near insanity, he selflessly endures hours of slow, languid riding until she exhausts herself. And when the pressures of command weigh heavily on the Emperor’s mind, she lets him tear her apart, and projects every bite, every blow, every sweetly painful sensation until the overstimulation sends him someplace quiet.

After a few minutes, she makes her way inside, too. He watches as she sheds her torn garments, leaving them in a bloody trail across the floor. It’s such a frustration. How someone can be so deliciously vain about her appearance, and yet completely reckless with her clothing is beyond him.

“It’s because I’m a wild thing,” she says as she walks by, “And I’ll never be domesticated by the likes of you.”

He won’t tell her to get out of his head, not this time. Right now, that’s precisely where he wants her. But he’ll leave her clothing and armor where it lies. If the Empress wants it off the floor, the Empress can pick it up herself.

She can feel him, across the room, as she steps beneath the hot water. Though she has not opened herself to it completely yet, she can sense his arousal shifting under her skin, demanding attention and favor. His fingers are wrapped around his cock, long and elegant and graceful, squeezing and sliding. Pulling himself to full, throbbing hardness.

She looks down, and sees the steady stream of blood running down her legs and into the drain. She has to wring it out of her hair by the handful.

Scrubbing war from your skin takes time.

Stepping from the shower, she towels her hair dry, then her body. Only then does she glide back into the bedroom, mechanical footfalls clicking across the stone floor. The night air from the open balcony is a welcome chill upon her flushed skin. And though exhaustion tugs wearily at her limbs, she cannot help but quicken at the sight of her mate.

He hasn’t moved. He lays on his back, legs spread wide, holding himself on the edge of climax. One hand moves back and forth across his own pale chest, hips tilting with the long, sinuous movement of his back. He seems to draw on her very nearness, the mere fact of her presence in the room. He looks up at her with the kind of startled devotion that ends worlds, and sees for the first time the map of bruises across her pale skin. They’ve been made darker and clearer by the pounding hot water. He wonders if it hurts her.

She shakes her head, gazing down at him from the foot of the bed. “No, my love,” she murmurs, “I’m not hurt.”

A weak moan slips from his lips, almost closer to a whimper, and he extends an upturned palm towards her. “My Empress,” he begs.

She crawls across the bed towards him, slow and languid. And when she straddles his hips and bends to lay her lips against his, a burst of golden light from his mind illuminates the space between them.

She loves it when he’s like this. When his obsession and his need flay him wide open, turn him inside out. He gets so demanding, but pliant, too. Deliciously pliant. The Empress wishes he’d picked a night when she wasn’t so tired, but she could never deny him. Not when he’s like this.

“Please,” he whispers, “ _Please_.” He says it in that breathy voice, the one laced with arousal and pain. He doesn’t need to say it like that. She’d do it anyway.

With a single, fluid roll of her hips, he’s inside her. At the same moment, she enters him: a focused beam lancing back between his eyes. His limbs go slack, mouth falling open in a silent, ecstatic cry. She runs her hands up his sides, over the lean cords of muscle, and slips his arms up over his head. Her fingers wind through his, holding them to the bed, and she begins to move.

She can hear him in her head: a low chanting whisper, like a desperate prayer. His sweet nickname for her features prominently, repeated over and over without a shred of irony.

“Ani,” he whispers.

It’s a name that only he has ever called her. A name that only he will _ever_ call her.

He begins leaning up into her thrusts, trying to meet her each time. But she’s holding him so tightly that it’s difficult.

“Ani,” he says again, “I said I’d fuck you, let me fuck you.”

She’s tired enough to acquiesce. She releases his hands, and he turns them over without leaving her body. A confident, graceful, well-practiced move. He spreads his thighs between hers, sinking deep, grinding against the walls of her. Making the breath catch in her throat. Her hands slip up his back, and then her nails rake down again, marring that perfect expanse of pale skin. He loves it. He hopes she can tell.

“Move,” she commands.

He does. He tried to make it hard; just as hard as she likes. Bright, hot pleasure begins to burn across every nerve in her body, and she gives it all right back to him. An endless loop, a pursuit that rises constantly, never receding.

But it doesn’t take long for her to decide that it isn’t what she wants, after all. Tonight, she craves control.

 _Lift me up_ , she commands.

He knows better than to argue with her. If he doesn’t do it, she’ll do it herself, and make him regret it. So, he sits back on his knees, and hauls her up into his lap. Their chests slam together, hard and aggressive. His eyes are wide and imploring as he gazes up at her, that ring of cold blue just barely visible around blown-out pupils.

For a moment, she lets her fingertips trace down his cheeks. Her eyes move hungrily across his face before finally coming to rest on his lips.

“My Starkiller.” She whispers it into his mouth, and then steals it back on a kiss. Inside her, his cock jumps.

And then she begins to move, rolling her hips back and forth along his length. His voice edges from his throat in short, sharp gasps, sending vibrations along her tongue as she kisses him. She sinks her teeth into the kiss, worrying his mouth into a stinging, cherry-pink. He hopes he bleeds. His fingertips press bruises into her hips, coaxing her onward, trying to keep up.

Her fingers curl through the soft strands of his hair and she pulls, yanking his head back hard enough that he hisses. Hux’s gaze is fixed on the high ceiling, and he makes that sound that she loves, something caught between a whimper and a moan. It’s soft enough to be missed, were they not so close together. She pulls a little harder. Hux moans a little louder.

 _Like prey_ , she thinks, dipping to drag her teeth along his smooth, pale neck. She likes feeling the life pulsing just beneath his skin.

As much as he hates the label, as much as every atom of his body rejects the submission, he cannot deny the deep, guilty, pleasurable throb in his belly. He slides a hand up her chest, wrapping his fingers around the back of her neck. Clinging to her while she fucks him.

“Please,” he begs, eyes rolling back, “Please.”

She can feel the coiled heat tightening in his stomach, and the building inevitability. It’s been mere minutes, and she’s nowhere near close, but she’s inclined to let him have it. She can ride his climax along with him. So, she opens herself to him completely; filling him, and letting him fill her. Her eyes fly wide, pupils dilating as she’s suddenly thrust to his plateau. His voice rises to a strangled, desolate cry at the sensation. Lights begin to pop behind his eyes.

“Yes,” she urges, “Yes, _yes_.”

Something in him is released at her command. He comes with a gasp, the voice snatched from his throat as every sensation in both their bodies seems to focus in his heart and then explode outward. Her body tenses, her hand finally releasing his hair, and he presses his cheek between her breasts to cling to her. It feels like he’ll never stop coming, like a hand has reached into his chest to wring his hear dry. They bend and stretch and compress together until they question whether they were ever two people to begin with. He’s screaming something to her in the privacy of their minds, babbling disjointed exaltation.

In these moments, he becomes another one of her acolytes.

It takes a long time for it to subside. And when it does, he lifts his cheek from her sweat-slick chest and gazes up at her in reverence and adoration.

“My beautiful Starkiller,” she pants, pressing kisses to his eyes, “Heart of my heart.”

Hux shudders when she leaves him, and falls heavily to the bed; so inelegant a motion for the perfectly-composed Emperor. She loves him like this- stretched out long and lean and lazy, pale skin still holding its glow. His neat hair has been rendered a damp and bright ruin, eyes half-lidded above a mouth that she’s left reddened and raw. Even now, after what they’ve just done to each other, his cock is half-hard between the languorous spread of his pale legs.

It takes a long time for the neurons in his brain to start firing functionally again, but she’s patient with him. She knows that, if she touches him now, it may render him a useless mess for several hours or more. She’d learned the hard way that Human men are not built to withstand the blissfully painful things she does to him. But that will never stop them.

When his breathing has finally slowed, Annihila moves down to recline on her side, between his legs, and rests her cheek against his thigh. He shifts around until he’s comfortable, settling her in against him, and then closes his eyes to relax into her warmth. No sooner has he begun questing blindly for the golden case on the nightstand, then he feels the cold metal brush against his fingertips in midair.

“Thank you,” he smiles, slipping a cigarette between his lips. He waits. After a long, empty moment, he cocks an eyebrow.

“Go on, then,” he coaxes, nudging at her with his foot. Still needy.

Unable to resist the cruel trick, she waits. Taunting him.

“ _Ani_.”

Finally, the cigarette ignites.

He takes a deep, grateful drag. “Tease.”

“You use to hate it when I did that,” she reminds him, letting her eyes fall shut.

The Emperor settles back into the bed, hooking his heel into the hollow of her hip and dragging her around until she’s laying perpendicular to him. “Tastes change.” He throws his leg over her waist, keeping her in place.

A loud knock tears her back from the brink of sleep. “Enter,” she commands, craning her neck to see the door.

One of her low-ranking Acolytes steps into the room, bowing deeply. “Your Imperial Majesties,” he greets, unsurprised by the sight of them spread out across the bed together. Such behavior is commonplace, for the sybarite Emperor and Empress, and they make little effort to hide it. He had been waiting in the corridor for the room to go quiet, before knocking.

Annihila lets her head fall back to Hux’s leg. “What is it, Wrend?”

“ _Ri Sith’ari_ , the _Night Buzzard_ is prepared for its return to the _Savage_. Will there be anything else, before they depart?”

She cranes her neck back to look at Hux. “My love?” she almost mocks.

He rolls his eyes, taking a lazy drag from his cigarette.

She smiles triumphantly, settling back into his warmth. “ _Nie,_ _dazek j'us_ ,” she says, the High Sith rolling beautifully across her tongue, “That’ll be all.”

He bows again, and then pauses, pointing to the bloody clothing and armor trailed across the room. “Would you like that cleaned and repaired, _Ri Sith’ari_?”

She casts her Emperor a haughty, satisfied smile. “Yes, thank you, Wrend.”

Hux gives her an admonishing look, as the Acolyte gathers up her battle-ruined garments. “Why?” he needles, “Why are you like this?”

She rolls her eyes.

“ _Spoilt_ , that’s what you've become.” Hux cranes his neck to make eye contact with the acolyte. “You know you’re only enabling this detestable behavior!”

The servant does not respond.

She takes her Emperor by the wrist, gently tugging his hand down so that she can take a drag from his cigarette. “Heart of my heart,” she says, “You would not want me any other way.”

The Emperor awakens the following morning, more rested than he has been in a long time. It’s barely dawn, not that one could tell by looking outside on this godforsaken planet. Annihila is already up, perched eerily on the balustrade as the punishing wind whips around her. Meditating. He knows that she knows he’s awake, and she’ll come to him when she’s ready.

He bathes, and wraps himself in an opulent dressing gown. For once, the thought of donning his crisp, white uniform seems stifling. Perhaps it’s his Empress bleeding into him; blurring the lines between them until the boundary exists no more. One of her acolytes brings his tea and breakfast, and he enjoys it while he scrolls through morning reports on his datapad. He hasn’t ordered anything for her. She wouldn’t take it, anyway. Mornings always see her in such an ascetic mood. It never lasts long, though, once she sets eyes on him.

 _A Jedi in the morning, and a Sith at night,_ he thinks, entirely too amused with the observation. He’s lucky she’s not listening.

After a few minutes, she dismounts the balustrade with a graceful leap, and begins moving through combat forms. He watches for a while, before his thoughts distract him.

The Emperor had intended to move on Corellia, next. Sever the Trade Spine, and paralyze the Core Systems; choking them off until they have no choice to yield. It would be the smart thing to do. The tactical thing. But an idea had occurred to him, just as he was falling asleep last night. It had burrowed its way into the base of his skull, where it’s been digging away relentlessly, ever since. Demanding his attention.

 _It would be so obscene_ , he thinks. _Decadent, really. It’s what a conqueror would do_.

He becomes so absorbed in thought that he doesn’t even realize she’s approaching, until her hands slip down his chest from behind.

“My Liege Lord,” she murmurs, lips dragging along the shell of his ear.

He takes her hand, rubbing his thumb along her knuckles, but his mind is far away.

They could do it, he has no doubt. _She_ could do it. It would be a hard five days, by his estimation. Heavy losses, to be sure. But instant, infallible supremacy.

He looks out to the dark horizon, watching the lightening pop and flash in the distance. This planet has infected him, he thinks. It has filled his head with such dark, impulsive desires.

The Empress can sense the tangle of thoughts at war behind his eyes. His mind is a bonfire with the sound turned down.

“Tell me,” she coaxes, “What would please the heart of my Emperor, today?”

He thinks hard before answering. “I want a palace,” he whispers, “I want a throne.”

“Heart of my heart, you have them, already.”

“No,” he murmurs, feeling his pulse begin to quicken, “You do.”

She cannot disagree. Her Emperor is a gold and glittering thing; he finds no comfort, here. This is a red and black place, made for her.

“Coruscant,” he whispers.

Her fingertips burn momentarily, and he feels the quiet thrill travel up her spine.

“That’s what I want, Ani,” he finally confesses, “Coruscant.”

She places a finger on his chin, turning him towards her. His expression is stern and resolute, but she can sense something imploring in him. Something guardedly hopeful.

Her eyes meet his, and she nods. “Then you shall have it.”

* * *

Three days later, the Emperor is stepping off of his transport ship, and onto the dock in the Galactic District. The city is eerily quiet, on this momentous evening. Where, typically, the sky would be threaded with beams of light and loud, frenetic speeder traffic, tonight the vast city-planet has ground to a total standstill. Raising his eyes to the skyscape above, Hux allows himself a rare smile. Even with the persistent light pollution of the endless metropolis, the stars make a fine sprinkling across the purple-pink canvas of encroaching nightfall. The Emperor feels no kinship with these stars, yet. Their patterns are still unfamiliar, and alien.

But they will be familiar, soon. They will come to be as much a part of him as the sprays of pale freckles across his own skin.

Before him stands the ancient palace, an amalgam of blockish edifices and sloping façades, reaching a mile into the sky. Even higher still stretches the quincunx of ivory council spires. This place had belonged to the Jedi, once, and then the Sith.

Now, it belongs to him.

The Processional Way is lined with bodies, hastily swept aside. Gore and viscera smear at the edges of the path that he’s certain his Empress has ordered her men to clear for him. She knows him well enough to have anticipated that he’d arrive in his full, dress uniform, and she knows how he feels about bloodstains on his white and gold cape.

She knows him in her marrow.

Even still, the smell is suppressive. He has to actively resist the urge to cover his nose and mouth with a gloved hand. As he walks, he takes an exacting tally of each and every Rebel corpse that bears a lightsaber wound, adding them to the grand sum of his devotion to his Sith Queen. By the time he passes between the massive statues of the Sage Masters, his heart feels as though it could burst.

His red-draped Imperial guards meet him at the door, respectfully falling in behind him as he strides into the palace. He is so close, now, he can hardly resist the quickening. The familiar solar corona pulses at the edge of his mind, growing hotter and brighter with each step he takes. He moves through the palace with purpose and drive; through the grand atrium, up the wide staircase. Though he has never set foot here before, he could navigate this fortress with his eyes closed. From the time of his childhood, the Emperor has studied this place with a quiet, covetous obsession. He knows every corridor and chamber within these walls, from the Imperial Residence, to the Grand Assembly Room, to the west-facing Contemplation Balcony. He knows which lifts access which wings, and he knows that the Room of a Thousand Fountains actually contains a mere one hundred and four. He can name every plant growing in the Temple Arboretum, and every tapestry that hangs on the walls.

Looking around, it is obvious to him that this was where the Resistance made their last stand. Bodies pile against the walls, the scars and stains of battle seeming to be one with the building itself.

For now.

He boards the lift at the base of the Temple Spire, and ascends alone.

When he reaches the heavy, double doors of the Imperial Audience Chamber, His Majesty pauses to take a deep, stilling breath. He straightens his ribbon board, smooths his hand down a nonexistent crease in his cape. And then he nods to the guards, and the doors open.

His path is beset on either side by loyal soldiers. To his left is a row of Storm Troopers. To his right, Sith acolytes. And there, standing at the end of the hall, beside the gilded throne, is his Empress.

She looks to be in far worse shape than she’d been after her campaign on Bar’leth. This time, it is obvious that much of the visible blood is her own. Her clothing and armor are torn and battle-stained, her hair wild and dripping with gore. The right side of her body, face included, looks as though it’s been peppered with shrapnel; some of it is still lodged in her breastplate. Chunks of Synthflesh have been sheared from her legs, exposing great swaths of shining, silver Cortosis, and one of her arms hangs in a sling made from her mesh cowl. It seems to him that her nose was, at one point, broken, and then sloppily re-set. By the look of it, she had rent it back into place herself. The resulting bruise spreads from the bridge of her nose to hang heavy and asymmetrical beneath her eyes. Nevertheless, she stands tall, chin thrust high with regal pride.

In this moment, she is more beautiful to him than ever before.

“My Liege Lord,” she says hoarsely, and her silver eyes burn with triumph and exhaustion, “Your throne.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have about 200 more pages detailing the rise and fall of Hux and Ani's 'What-if' Empire. Evil fluff, heartwarming genocidal power-couple shit, violent sex. Fancy wardrobes and reversed gender roles. People paying Hux compliments, for once (Aw, Shucks, Hux). Gratuitous murder. Canto Bight. Hot aliens. Genuine sweetboys. Reminders that Hux was in the Space Navy before he married a lady. And I use it as a bridge between Abrams canon and EU canon, getting us back on-track.
> 
> Y'all wanna read that shit?


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